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JLL gets in rental home business

Minority stake in Roofstock gives investor clients access to new opportunities

 JLL CEO of capital markets Richard Bloxam and Roofstock CEO Gary Beasley (JLL, Roofstock, iStock)
JLL CEO of capital markets Richard Bloxam and Roofstock CEO Gary Beasley (JLL, Roofstock, iStock)

JLL is entering the single-family rental game.

The commercial real estate giant is set to become a minority investor in Roofstock, an online rental housing investment platform, the Wall Street Journal reported. Roofstock will buy JLL’s Stessa, a real estate asset-management platform that has gained traction from smaller investors. It will also work with JLL clients who are interested in the single-family rental market.

“The single-family rental asset class is seeing strong demand from our investor clients — both private and increasingly institutional — and this investment will position our teams to offer unique insights and access to opportunities in this space,” said Richard Bloxam, the CEO of capital markets at JLL.

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Establishing a new source of revenue is crucial for JLL, whose earnings fell more than 20 percent in 2020 because of the pandemic-driven decline in leasing, which is expected to be slow to recover this year.

The partnership with JLL, meanwhile, gives Roofstock “credibility with a lot of their customers who are looking to invest in U.S. housing,” the company’s CEO Gary Beasley told the publication. “They can dial in a strategy and our team will build those portfolios for them and manage the properties.”

The single-family rental sector has attracted investors since the Great Recession when they bought bundles of foreclosed homes and converted them to rentals. The pandemic has been a tailwind for the sector as urbanites fled from crowded cities and settled in suburban rental homes with backyards. A recent shortage of affordable rental homes led to the build-to-rent trend among investors.

[WSJ] — Akiko Matsuda

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Commercial Real EstateJLLRoofstockSingle-family Rental