Oliver Chang, the former head of U.S. housing strategy at Morgan Stanley, launched an asset management firm this month that will focus on acquiring distressed single-family rental homes.
Sylvan Road Capital, based in Atlanta, will buy and renovate single-family housing units and convert them to rental properties in order to help stabilize communities and provide employment opportunities.
“America is moving toward a rentership society, and I believe the opportunity to purchase and professionally manage single-family rental homes represents one of the most compelling investment opportunities across all asset classes,” said Chang, co-founder and managing director of Sylvan Road Capital.
Nearly one year ago, the Federal Housing Finance Agency issued a request for information to determine how to dispose over 220,000 bank-owned properties that were in the portfolios of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration. FHFA decided to initiate a REO-to-rental program, which has
Besides Chang, who began his career at Morgan Stanley in 2005 where he focused on all aspects of the housing market including supply and foreclosure issues, demand and mortgage credit concerns, and the relationship between home prices and mortgage performance, the rest of the executive team at Sylvan Road Capital includes Robert Lee, Sarah Lee and Gavin Kleinknecht. The trio are principals of Atlanta-based Delmar Realty Advisors, which was created in 2008 to exclusively focus on the buy-to-rent single-family home market.
The Delmar executives have been in homebuilding, property management and real estate investing since 1996, collectively building over $100 million in new-single family homes and raising over $1 billion for real estate investment funds.
Combined, the Sylvan Road capital team has about 50 years of real estate experience.
“We are excited to be working with Oliver to realize our shared vision of delivering high quality, yet affordable, single-family rental homes to residents across the country,” said Robert Lee. “It is very rare to find an opportunity that represents a good investment and also allows you to build a company that helps people and communities with their everyday lives.”
