Blackstone Group LP (BX) and other private equity rivals such as KKR, are intelligently diving into the rental property business. By buying foreclosed homes and renting them out these companies are able to capture attractive cash flow yields, while benefiting from likely appreciation into the future. The key to these investments is scale and property management, in addition to obviously be price conscientious. I’d expect to see a lot of these REIT’s go public in the next couple of years as I’m confident that the well managed ones should work quite well with pricing being where its at. If you are an investor looking at one of these just make sure you know exactly what fees you are paying, as often the fees and lock up periods prove to be extremely detrimental to clients experience in these types of products.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-03/blackstone-makes-foray-into-houses-for-rent-mortgages.html