Just as national home prices were bottoming in early 2012 following the crash that started in 2007, the institutional buyer Invitation Homes (owned by Blackstone at the time) was entering the U.S. housing market and looking for deals at rock-bottom prices. Within a year, the single-family rental operator had acquired around 24,000 homes.
Fast-forward to the pandemic, and Dallas-based Invitation Homes once again went on a homebuying spree as soaring rents and home prices—coupled with low borrowing costs and easy access to capital—created a once-in-a-generation house-buying opportunity. At the height of the pandemic boom, Invitation Homes bought 1,684 homes in the third quarter of 2023.
