3,000 homes to be offloaded by Starwood Capital

Starwood Capital Group is exploring the sale of two portfolios of single-family rental homes, seeking to unload roughly 3,000 properties as the once-frenzied U.S. housing market cools.

Starwood, led by Barry Sternlicht, is working with advisers on the potential sales, each of which is expected to fetch around $500 million, according to people familiar with the effort, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Many of the properties are in the U.S. South, one of the people said.

A Starwood spokesperson didn’t immediately have a comment.

Starwood, one of the largest apartment owners in the U.S., was an aggressive buyer of rental houses during the first two years of the pandemic, as renters sought bigger spaces to ride out the remote-working era. 

In May, Sternlicht told Bloomberg that his firm owned roughly 15,000 single-family rentals and 100,000 apartments, arguing that rising mortgage rates would create more demand for rental housing.

Still, the current sales effort comes during a precarious time in the housing market. Rising borrowing costs, which have thinned the ranks of families who can afford to buy, have also tempered investor appetites. Still, some property firms see opportunities on the horizon, girding capital in hopes of buying at discount.

There are already indications that prices have come down. The chief executive officer of single-family landlord Tricon Residential Inc. told investors in May that private-market pricing on residential portfolios was down 10% from the peak.