A joint venture has been formed between single-family rental home company Invitation Homes and real estate investor Rockpoint Group to leverage opportunities for acquisitions in the single-family rental home market.
The joint venture will receive a total equity commitment of USD 375 million, USD 75 million of which will be provided by Invitation Homes and the rest by Rockpoint.
Including debt, a total of USD 1 billion will be adopted by the joint venture to fuel the acquisition and renovation of single-family homes in Southeast and Western United States, as well as Texas and Florida, where New York Stock Exchange-listed Invitation Homes already has a presence.
“We view this investment as an opportunity to supplement our long-standing focus on for-rent housing across the United States through a partnership with a proven industry leader in the single-family rental sector,” said Rockpoint co-founder, Keith Gelb, in a statement.
Gelb added that Rockpoint’s strategic partnership with Invitation Homes will provide a “housing solution in America by expanding quality of choice for those seeking homes for lease in areas with attractive supply and demand fundamentals”.
Highlighting rental demand in the market, Invitation Homes’ president and CEO, Dallas Tanner, commented that “the need for high-quality rental housing in the US are as strong as they have been in [the] company’s history”.
Invitation Homes will contribute its property and asset management expertise and investment services to the joint venture partnership, in return for fees.
Simultaneous to the deployment of capital from the joint venture, Invitation Homes will also use capital from its own balance sheet to finance future acquisitions to add to its own portfolio.
Latham & Watkins acted as legal counsel to Invitation Homes on the joint venture agreement, with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher advising Rockpoint.
New York partner Michael Haas and Los Angeles partner Julian Kleindorfer led the Latham & Watkins corporate deal team, among others.
In the US, last month, Latham & Watkins acted as legal counsel to Californian liquid software company JFrog on its initial public offering on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.
