Roofstock Starts Market Expansion With San Francisco Bay Area and Atlanta Investment Homes
SFR Marketplace Adds Market-Specific Analysis and Make-Offer Feature
Oakland, CA – May 5, 2016 – Roofstock™, the first dedicated online marketplace for investing in leased single-family rental (SFR) homes, today announced its expansion into two new markets that now make buying and selling properties in Atlanta and the San Francisco East Bay region stock market simple.
Launched in March with an exclusive curated inventory of rental homes in Florida, the Roofstock marketplace is the new, more efficient way to buy and sell investment homes. For sellers, properties can be sold without having to wait until tenants move out, avoiding the lost income while marketing a vacant home and the significant selling costs associated with traditional channels. For buyers, Roofstock offers a proprietary inventory of leased, certified, professionally managed homes that generate immediate cash flow and future home price appreciation potential. Homes can be virtually toured and purchased on-line, without the buyer having to be in the same geography, leveraging the extensive property diligence available pre-purchase.
“Atlanta and the San Francisco East Bay are very active SFR markets, each representing different but compelling characteristics, with attractively-priced Atlanta properties offering higher current yields, and the Bay Area offering strong rental growth and appreciation potential given the region’s growing economy and supply constraints,” said Roofstock’s CEO and Co-founder Gary Beasley. “What makes Roofstock unique is we are separating the investing and operational elements, so investors anywhere in the world can now diversify their portfolios with U.S. rental homes without worrying about the day-to-day management responsibilities.”
The SFR sector is now worth $2 trillion and growing. One in 10 U.S. households rent a single-family home today. And, rents have begun to rise sharply as the economy improves, according to the latest Fair Market Rents set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Rents for homes with three bedrooms, for example – which largely represent rental houses – grew 3.4 percent in 2016. That’s up from 2.2 percent in 2015 and 1.0 percent in 2014.
SFR industry pioneers Beasley, Gregor Watson, Rich Ford and Devin Wade, started Roofstock on the belief that investing in SFR properties should be as easy and transparent as investing in the stock market.
Beasley is the former CEO of Waypoint Homes and co-CEO of public SFR REIT Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust. Watson is the founder of SFR investment firm 643 Capital Management. Ford, as managing director at Jefferies, was widely regarded as one of the leading investment bankers in the SFR industry. And Wade is a payments and secure processing serial entrepreneur.
In addition to now providing exclusive inventory in Atlanta and the San Francisco East Bay, Roofstock today also launched a new make-an-offer capability to supplement its fixed price offers, as well as new market-specific analyses to help buyers choose homes that best meet their investment criteria and goals.
“Many of our charter customers told us they really liked the simplicity of our pre-negotiated price, but some buyers and sellers also wanted the ability to make or accept an offer on a property where the parties may be close in value,” said Beasley. “Starting today, we’re giving buyers an opportunity to submit offers on those homes where sellers are open to considering them.”
When using the new make-an-offer feature, until an offer is accepted the properties remain available for purchase at their asking prices, preserving the ability for investors to buy any home on Roofstock at a fixed price.
“In stock market parlance, think of the new feature as being able to make a limit order in addition to a market order,” said Beasley.
The new market-specific analysis reports added to Roofstock’s diligence documents starting today include a wide range of insights and data such as the rent vs. home price growth in a specific county or neighborhood, or the share of renter households in single-family homes in the region where a home being considered for investment is located.
About Roofstock
Roofstock is the first online marketplace and community created exclusively for investing in leased single-family rental homes that generate cash flow day one. Created by investors for investors, Roofstock provides research, analytics and insights to evaluate and purchase independently certified properties at prices that reflect both market and property conditions. From viewing the homes and their diligence documents to analyzing potential returns and selecting one of our certified local property managers, Roofstock’s mission is to make real estate investing stock market simple. Roofstock headquarters are in the San Francisco Bay Area. Whether you’re looking to make your first rental property investment or building a property portfolio, make your next investment today at roofstock.com.
Media Contact:
Stacey Corso
Senior Communications Manager, Roofstock
scorso@roofstock.com
