September 2017

Earlier this month, our very own Kenneth D. Hackman, a regular contributor to Crunched Credit, moderated a panel entitled Single-Family Rental: The Landscape and Future of CRE’s Newest Asset Class, hosted by Dechert LLP, for CREFC’s After-Work Seminar Series.

The esteemed panel consisted of Kevin S. Dwyer, Senior Vice President, RMBS, Morningstar Credit Ratings, LLC; Bradley J. Hauger, Senior Vice President, Loan Servicing Director, PNC Real Estate/Midland Loan Services; J. Christopher Hoeffel, Chief Financial Officer, CoreVest American Finance and R. Christopher Jones, Director, Deutsche Bank.

Readers of Crunched Credit know that we are bullish on SFR: single-family rental is the largest class of rental stock in America, eclipsing the multi-family market. The number of single-family rental units grew 23% from 2006-2015, with most of that growth following the Great Recession. Since then, the institutional single-family rental business has blossomed into a viable, long-term business. And as institutional ownership has grown, SFR finance has grown apace.

You know, for a long time, we, and I think many other observers, thought that SFR was a trade created by the collapse of the residential housing market in 2007-2008. We thought when the opportunity to buy single family homes at ridiculously low prices, fix them up and rent them went away, the trade would go away. We were wrong and SFR is growing into a mature industry that is likely to continue to grow for many years. Right now, depending on who you ask, 12 or 13% of US housing stock is now single family home rentals. Of that, only a small percentage is in institutional hands. Note that in several G20 countries, a very large portion of the housing stock is in institutional hands. It seems there’s plenty of headroom for this industry to grow here at home.
Continue Reading Single-Family Rental: The Landscape and Future of CRE’s Newest Asset Class

In this commentary we have talked about a lot of challenges facing commercial real estate finance and other capital market activities over the years.  With more or less “pants on fire” anxiety, we’ve talked about Dodd-Frank’s regulatory compliance burdens, the Volcker Rule, Risk Retention, the glorious and multitudinous products of the gnomes of Basil, the efforts of the “we hate all Anglo-Saxon bullshit” gang in the European Community to strangle securitization, the LIBOR scandal, geopolitical risk, and the famous unknown unknowns.

But, right now, we need to concentrate people:  it’s the tax code, stupid.  For those with limited bandwidth, and I count myself among them, this is where much of our energy needs to be focused.  
Continue Reading It’s the Taxes, Stupid