Housing affordability struggles among millennials are fueling a new asset class, according to Fred Hubler: single-family build-to-rent communities, built through 3-5 year programs to build, lease up, and sell. As millennials increasingly reach their family-forming years, tight housing supply and rising prices are pushing many toward renting spacious single-family homes instead of buying.
He backs this up with data: the median millennial age has risen from 33 in 2021 to 36 today, and citing Harvard’s “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2023” report, annual household growth among people aged 35-44 more than doubled, climbing from about 210,000 per year in 2017-2019 to about 560,000 per year in 2019-2022. Hubler notes Blackstone alone has invested more than $9.5 billion into single-family rentals over the past 30 months, and citing Cushman & Wakefield, build-to-rent communities are absorbing new inventory far faster than traditional multifamily, topping nearly 5% versus under 2% at their respective peaks.
One statistic says it all: Blackstone alone has poured over $9.5 billion into this space in under three years, and the demand data suggests that trend has room to keep running.
Read Hubler’s complete analysis on Forbes, Millennials Flock To Single-Family Rentals.