Blackstone Rolls Out Its Rental MBS

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Banks set to roadshow Blackstone home-rental bond

Thu, Oct 24 2013
By Adam Tempkin

NEW YORK, Oct 24 (IFR) - Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan will begin marketing the first-ever bond backed by US home-rental cashflows, a US$500 million trade for private-equity giant Blackstone, next Wednesday.

The banks will meet with investors in New York on October 30, and then visit Boston and Los Angeles the following two days.

Deutsche bank is the lead structurer, while Credit Suisse and JP Morgan will be acting as joint leads for the transaction.

The deal, titled Invitation Homes 2013-SFR1, will receive ratings from Kroll, Morningstar, and Moody's. At least one of those ratings will be Triple A.

The deal will be secured by individual mortgage liens on each underlying property rather than an equity pledge in the property-owning special purpose vehicle (SPV), allowing for the creation of a so-called real estate mortgage investment conduit (Remic) structure, according to sources close to the deal.

Remics, which are also used in CMBS, allow for the pooling of a diverse set of loans from different originators and offer flexibility in assembling a security.

Rating agencies had preferred that mortgages were in place as legal instruments in any potential REO-to-rental securitization structure so that bondholders do not get shut out of payments in case competing liens were placed on any particular property.

Agencies cautioned that in the absence of a recorded mortgage, bondholders could be on the hook if an issuer/sponsor puts an SPV owning the homes into bankruptcy.

Therefore, despite the recording fees and administrative costs involved with filing individual mortgages on each property, the mortgage structure seemed the best route for the first single-family rental securitization deal, sources said.

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Re: Blackstone Rolls Out Its Rental MBS

At least one of those ratings will be Triple A.

sound familiar . . .

[don]

Re: Blackstone Rolls Out Its Rental MBS

this time the MBS product is different . . .

by Michael Krieger of Liberty Bitzkrieg blog,

This new incursion by hedge funds and private equity groups into the American single-family home rental market is unprecedented, and is proving disastrous for many of the tens of thousands of families who are moving into these newly converted rental homes. In recent weeks, HuffPost spoke with more than a dozen current tenants, along with former employees who recently left the real estate companies. Though it’s not uncommon for tenants to complain about their landlords, many who had rented before described their current experience as the worst they’ve ever had.

A former inspector for American Homes 4 Rent who worked in the Dallas office said he routinely examined homes just prior to rental that were not habitable. Though it wasn’t his job to answer complaints, he said he fielded “hundreds of calls” from irate tenants.

- From the Huffington Post’s excellent article: Here’s What Happens When Wall Street Builds A Rental Empire

This is a topic that I have been writing extensively on since the beginning of the year. In fact, I don’t think there’s another topic I have focused so intently on in the whole of 2013, with the exception of the NSA revelations. It all started back in January with my post titled, America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street, which received a huge amount of attention in the alternative media world.

I knew from the start that this whole “buy-to-rent” thing would be a disaster. Over the last decade or so, everything that Wall Street touched has turned into a scheme primarily focused on parasitically funneling wealth and resources away from society at large to itself. This is no different. They call it a “new asset class.” I call it Wall Street serfdom.
What makes this article even more interesting is that it’s not simply greed, it is also obvious that these Wall Street firms have no idea what the fuck they are doing. For example:

Former employees of the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they worry about jeopardizing their careers, said their former colleagues can’t keep up with the volume of complaints. The rush to buy up as many homes as possible has stretched resources to the point of breaking, these people said.

My advice to people out there in the rental market, is they should try to avoid Wall Street rentals. The three main companies highlighted in this article are: Invitation Homes (owned by Blackstone), Colony American and American Homes 4 Rent. Unfortunately, it appears these companies may try to hide their presence in certain markets so you may have to do additional digging. For example, WRI Property Management is the local agent of Colony American in Georgia.
More from the Huffington Post:

There’s no escaping the stench of raw sewage in Mindy Culpepper’s Atlanta-area rental home. The odor greets her before she turns into her driveway each evening as she returns from work. It’s there when she prepares dinner, and only diminishes when she and her husband hunker down in their bedroom, where they now eat their meals.

For the $1,225 a month she pays for the three-bedroom house in the quiet suburb of Lilburn, Culpepper thinks it isn’t too much to expect that her landlord, Colony American Homes, make the necessary plumbing repairs to eliminate the smell. But her complaints have gone unanswered, she said. Short of buying a plane ticket to visit the company’s office in Scottsdale, Ariz., she is out of ideas.

“You can not get in touch with them, you can’t get them on the phone, you can’t get them to respond to an email,” said Culpepper, whose family has lived with the problem since the day they moved in five months ago. “My certified letters, they don’t get answered.”

Most rental houses in the U.S. are owned by individuals, or small, local businesses. Culpepper’s landlord is part of a new breed: a Wall Street-backed investment company with billions of dollars at its disposal. Over the past two years, Colony American and its two biggest competitors, Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, have spent more than $12 billion buying and renovating at least 75,000 homes in order to rent them out.

Most who spoke with HuffPost said they moved into their rental homes only to find that renovations they were assured were comprehensive amounted to little more than a fresh coat of paint and new carpeting. Tenants said they immediately discovered major mechanical and plumbing problems: broken water heaters and air conditioners, broken toilets and in some cases even vermin infestations, including fleas, silverfish and rodents.

Several weeks after Rosemary moved into the Raleigh, N.C., house she’s renting from American Homes 4 Rent, her hot water tank exploded. Rosemary, who declined to use her last name for fear of losing her security deposit, said she couldn’t shower for days. It took constant calls and emails to the rental company before they sent someone to replace the tank.

Former employees of the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they worry about jeopardizing their careers, said their former colleagues can’t keep up with the volume of complaints. The rush to buy up as many homes as possible has stretched resources to the point of breaking, these people said.

A former inspector for American Homes 4 Rent who worked in the Dallas office said he routinely examined homes just prior to rental that were not habitable. Though it wasn’t his job to answer complaints, he said he fielded “hundreds of calls” from irate tenants.

“It’s just a slumlord,” Culpepper said of Colony American. “A huge, billion-dollar slumlord.”

Indeed, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.