EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since 2013, there has been widespread media coverage of the emerging REO-(Real Estate Owned)-to-rental market, also known as “single-family home rental market,” and new, untested, investor revenue streams through rental securitization. Across the country, reports characterize these Wall Street investors as absentee landlords at best,1 and casually issuing rapid eviction notices at worst.2 The trend of Wall Street investors buying up single-family homes, managing them as rentals on a massive scale, and securitizing rents, is unsettling to communities still recovering from a foreclosure crisis precipitated by mortgage securitization. Communities have an understandable suspicion of the activities of Wall Street, as well as questions about their lack of experience as landlords. Property management of hundreds of thousands of single-family homes by institutional investors is a new business model that, given its scale, is giving rise to a new, untested kind of landlord-tenant relationship.
In order to deepen our understanding of how renters in California are faring under Wall Street landlords who engage in rental securitization, over the past six months Tenants Together conducted a survey of California tenants living in properties owned and managed by the state’s largest investor-landlords: Blackstone/Invitation Homes (over 5,000 homes in California), Waypoint Homes (approximately 2,500 homes), and Colony American Homes (approximately 2,000 homes). Our goal was to compare and contrast company policies and practices statewide and gain insight into what the tenant experience is like renting from Wall Street.
Acknowledgements
Aimee Inglis: Principal Author, Member Services Coordinator, Tenants Together
Rhonda Michele Smith: Contributing Author, MPP Candidate, Goldman School of Public Policy
Contributors & Editors
Dean Preston, Esq., Executive Director, Tenants Together
Kevin Sciarani, Esq., J.D., University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Tony Romano, Organizing Director, Right to the City Alliance
Desiree Fields, Lecturer, Dept. of Geography, University of Sheffield, Right to the City Research Committee Member
Marnie Brady, PhD candidate, Sociology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Right to the City Research Committee Member
Leah Simon-Weisberg, Esq., Legal Director, Tenants Together
Carlos Jauregui, Community Organizer, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy
Copy Editor
Aileen Joy, Office Manager, Tenants Together
This research and report is made possible through funding from The San Francisco Foundation
