Merging Landlords See Growing Profit in Single Family Rentals

Investors bought single-family homes by the thousands at fire sale prices during the foreclosure crisis with the idea of a short-term turn. But now big investors are making a play for this new real estate class of Single Family Rentals beyond what anyone was considering before.

What happens now? CNBC takes a look.

Large-scale investors have bought close to 200,000 mostly distressed properties to rehabilitate and turn as rentals since the height of the housing crash, according to several reports. That is still a small share of the roughly 15 million single-family rental properties nationwide.
The total number of single-family rental homes increased 35 percent since 2006, with smaller investors also taking on millions of distressed properties to rent. This happened as the nation's home ownership rate fell to the lowest level in 50 years.
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Investors in rentals continue to bet that home ownership will remain low or even go lower. Tight lending, rising home prices and a generational shift in attitudes favoring renting are all on their side. Convincing Wall Street, however, has been tougher.

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