Invitation Homes plans to spend $1 billion buying houses in an already overheated market. Here's its presentation to investors setting out its playbook. (2024)

Despite the rising prices and intense competition for homes, the companies have been able to outmaneuver everyday homebuyers by paying cash for houses and closing on deals more quickly. The companies see the current market conditions as a favorable moment to pounce as more prospective buyers are priced out by rising home values and mortgage interest rates that are expected to increase, forcing many to instead rent.

Institutional investors now own a little more than 1% of all single-family rental homes in the US, according to an industry group.

Invitation Homes, the largest public-single family rental operator with a market cap of roughly $20 billion, is poised to be the SFR industry's biggest beneficiary and busiest acquirer of new homes. Founded by the alternative investment giant, the Blackstone Group, in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis nearly a decade ago and publicly listed in 2017, the firm is planning its record year of acquisitions, according to an investor presentation that it published in March of this year.

The company is planning to spend over $1 billion on home purchases this year. The company says it invests capital tofix up homes that otherwise would remain neglected and offers renters a chance to live in a home they might not be able to afford to purchase.

An Insider investigation found that Invitation Homes and other institutional investors are also brushing aside average homebuyers in some of the nation's most competitive housing markets.

An Invitation Homes spokesperson told Insider that the company "purchased less than two-tenths of 1% of all of the homes sold on the multiple listing services in the 16 markets in which we operate," and rejected the notion that it was systematically beating out conventional home buyers. Among Invitation Home's largest markets are Southern California, Atlanta, Phoenix, and South Florida.

A Reuters investigation found that Invitation Homes and other corporate landlords, both single and multi-family, have been evicting tenants during the pandemic even though the CDC has put in place a conditional eviction ban. An Invitation Homes spokesperson told Reuters that the company plans to use its "legal rights" to challenge tenants' CDC declarations for eviction relief after it has "exhausted all other options."

While the company may have faced some public criticism, it's had no problem raising, or deploying money. Take a look at the company's most recent investor presentation below (some slides have been deleted that don't contain relevant information).