Great Gulf Group Partners with Westdale for SFR Venture

Another new investor is entering the single-family rental space.

The Great Gulf Group partnered with Westdale Real Estate Investment and Management to develop, build, own and operate build-to-rent single-family housing communities in the Sunbelt.

Initially, The Great Gulf Group and Westdale committed $200 million of equity to the venture and may kick in an additional $200 million.

Like many groups, The Great Gulf sees positive demographic trends Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers driving demand.

“The build-to-rent single-family sector currently lacks in supply of modern purpose-built single-family housing and our partners and we are well-positioned to leverage our collective platforms and expertise,” said Ilias Konstantopoulos, CEO of the Great Gulf Group, in a prepared statement. “We expect the favorable demand-supply imbalance to continue in the near term with current annual demand estimated at over 250,000 newly built single-family rental homes compared to a current annual supply of approximately 50,000.” 

Great Gulf, via the venture, currently controls several build-to-rent single-family communities that are under development and is targeting to develop and own more than 4,000 homes. Westdale, a Top 50 apartment owner on the National Multifamily Housing Council list, has more than $100 billion of net assets under management.

The Great Gulf venture comes on the heels of homebuilder Lennar launching a $4 billion single-family rental platform with lead investor Centerbridge, marking the latest entrant in the white-hot SFR market.

Dubbed Upward America Venture, the business will acquire single-family homes for rent in high-growth markets across the US. It will initially be capitalized with a total equity commitment of $1.25 billion. Including leverage, the venture will have $4 billion in purchasing power. 

Michael Carey, senior director at Altus Group, says several homebuilders are partnering with institutions to produce SFRs. “The home builders look at this as, ‘Hey, I have security here,’” Carey tells GlobeSt.com. “They can sell all of the homes at one time, not one at a time. It takes that risk out of the timeframe as well. It compresses it for them.”

Sometimes, builders are also working on sites that don’t necessarily work for for-sale homes. These sites may be further out of a large metro where it is easier to buy land.

Westdale isn’t the only apartment firm with a foothold in the apartment industry to jump into the SFR space. Ken Valach, CEO of Trammell Crow Residential, says his company has bought a site to build single-family rentals. “We’ve actually bought a site, but we haven’t started it yet,” Valach says.