As the nation’s premier home leasing company, Invitation Homes is proud to provide high-quality homes for nearly 80,000 American families. We play a small but important part in the nation’s overall housing market by providing choice, flexibility, and professional service to the growing share of Americans who are opting not to buy a house.
Our company began in 2012 when a small group of investors started buying mostly vacant homes that were dragging down property values and slowing the local economic recovery. That action stabilized local housing markets, spurred economic growth, and created jobs after the financial crisis.
In the past 8 years, we have grown both in size and maturity. While we’re still a very small part of the nation’s housing market, we provide an important option in our 16 communities for families seeking to rent updated homes near good schools, good jobs, and other attractive amenities.
Our company is occasionally mischaracterized in the press, and here we correct some of the most recurrent misperceptions.
Impact on Rent
Despite our growth and the fact that we own nearly 80,000 homes across the country, we remain a small piece of the rental market for single-family homes and an even smaller sliver of the overall housing market. Invitation Homes owns less than one half of 1 percent of the country’s 16.2 million single-family rental homes, and all institutional investors together own less than 2 percent. And since we operate in some of the most competitive housing markets in the country, there is very little room for error. If we want to rent our homes, we must price in line with the market.
Availability of Housing
Invitation Homes operates only a minuscule slice of the roughly 95 million single-family homes in the U.S. Our acquisitions in 2019 represented 1/10th of 1 percent of all the homes sold in the cities in which we operate. Moreover, because many of the homes we purchased required significant upfront renovations, this is not the same market as first-time home buyers, who typically do not want to take on a home that requires immediate investments. In addition, over the last three years, we have sold more homes than we have purchased. These facts show that it’s simply not accurate that we are influencing the market.
Eviction Proceedings
Perhaps the most pernicious of the claims we face is that we care more about shareholders than residents. Detractors point to individual stories of resident maintenance concerns, as well as the perception that Invitation Homes and other large single-family leasing companies evict people at a faster rate than mom-and-pop landlords. Let us be clear, Invitation Homes is in the business of housing families, so eviction is never a course we want to pursue. We are proud to provide a valuable housing option for nearly 80,000 American families in a variety of income brackets. And we always work together with our residents to try to find a solution that will keep them in their homes, as shown during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which we’ve created payment plans to assist residents who’ve been impacted financially. Occasionally, when all avenues have been exhausted and a resident is repeatedly unable to meet their lease agreement, we proceed with eviction. But it is always – always – our last resort.
Maintenance Requests
When it comes to maintenance, Invitation Homes is committed to providing residents with outstanding 24/7 service, and our renewal rate and resident satisfaction scores demonstrate that the vast majority of our residents are having a positive experience. Last year, our residents gave us an average satisfaction score of 4.7 out of 5.0 on maintenance activities, across more than 50,000 internal surveys. These efforts are why Invitation Homes retains a 97+ percent occupancy rate, and more than 70 percent of our residents renew their leases. On average, our residents stay in their homes for nearly three years. Our business depends on satisfied residents, so our focus is on providing quality, safe, and functional homes that keep them happy.
We are proud of our company and the homes and services we provide our residents. We will continue our increased effort to ensure our residents, and the public at large, know just how committed we are to providing high-quality homes in good neighborhoods at competitive rents and delivering the outstanding service that motivates the overwhelming majority of our residents to renew their leases.