America's biggest manager of single-family rental homes hopes to become the biggest one-stop shop for landlords big and small.
Eden Prairie-based Renters Warehouse, which manages more than 22,000 homes in more than 40 U.S. metro areas, said it will acquire OwnAmerica Real Estate to create what it is calling the nation's first full-service, online real estate investment company.
The deal is expected to close Jan. 1. Terms were not disclosed.
Renters Warehouse President and CEO Kevin Ortner said the deal will enable the company's customers, which have hired Renters Warehouse to provide day-to-day operations of their rentals, to buy more real estate online.
It'll also help the company serve bigger customers, which it refers to as investors, who want to own single-family houses without the hassles of managing them. The acquisition enables Renters Warehouse to provide detailed investment data, including stock-like analysis of their investment, and local market data that includes unemployment trends and income analysis.
"We've been seeing a lot more interest from institutional money coming in and saying the single-family rental space is exciting, but we want to be hands off," Ortner said.
With the market tools already in place, OwnAmerica enables clients to buy and sell properties to one another in a much more streamlined way.
"One of the issues we face in SFR [single-family residence] space is the liquidity of the asset," Ortner said. "There is some friction involved."