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5 Takeaways from Q3'25 SFR REIT Earnings Calls
SFR REITs remain priced out of homebuying, continuing to be net sellers of existing homes and recycling capital into new construction
Jay Parsons
November 14, 2025
Today’s edition sponsored by: JPI, Authentic and Madera Residential.
If there was a broad theme to the calls from the two SFR REITs — AMH and Invitation Homes — it was simply “solid.” More on that in a moment. But what it’s NOT is a boom. Remember all those headlines (NOT from the REITs themselves) saying SFR would boom because no one was buying houses? That narrative didn’t make sense back then and it still doesn’t make sense today.
BUT … SFR is indeed solid.
And I think what we’ve seen play out is this: In a weak homebuyer market and slow job growth environment, SFR seems to have a relatively high floor — and that’s the story. The trade-off effect with homebuying has always been overstated. We know SFR rent growth tends to be higher when there are more home sales. And both of the SFR REIT CEOs have said the same, including on The Rent Roll podcast.
BTW if you missed it: Last week, we shared out Top 10 highlights and themes from the apartment REITs. This week, it’s SFR’s turn. (See below)
Also: We just released an episode of The Rent Roll podcast covering many of these takeaways from the SFR REITs, and this episode also features a conversation with Dave Feldman, the CEO of the nation’s largest SFR owner, Progress Residential.
REMINDER: None of this is investment advice whatsoever, so please don’t interpret it as such. I’m just sharing things from earnings calls that I find interesting.
ALSO: If you’re interested in extended highlights from the apartment and SFR REITs, I’m posting a running thread on X / Twitter. I’m a bit behind on updates, but more will be posted in the coming days so keep checking back.
Five Takeaways from Q3’25 Earnings Calls
(CONTINUED BELOW…)
#1 - SFR fundamentals remain solid in Q3
Both AMH and Invitation chose the same word in describing their Q3 – “solid.” And indeed, that seems like a fair word.
Invitation’s COO Tim Lobner said they continue to “deliver solid same-store results,” while AMH’s CEO Bryan Smith said his company “delivered solid same-home core revenue growth.”
AMH reported Q3 occupancy at 95.9%. New leases up 2.5%, renewals up 4%. Blended at 3.6%.
Invitation reported occupancy at 96.5%. New leases slightly negative while renewals up 4.5%. Blended rents up 3%.
Invitation Homes’ CEO Dallas Tanner said that “demand remains consistent. And while new lease growth continues to be an opportunity, our renewal performance is outstanding.” That sums of much of the rental market here in 2025.
Invitation said new supply (in form of both BTR homes and “accidental landlords” putting more homes in the rental pool) remains a headwind to new lease rents. But Invitation also said supply pressures are loosening in Atlanta and in Florida, while saying it’s still tough in Phoenix.
Both Invitation and AMH both said the Midwest – where there’s a lot less supply pressure – remains a hot spot in the portfolios.
AMH said something we heard from the apartment REITs too, that September was slower than usual for leasing activity. And that brought occupancy down in October from where it was in Q3, and new lease rents softened as well. But AMH said leasing picked back up again in October.
Invitation reported some softening in the October numbers as well, but implied what they saw was normal seasonality. And while rents cooled, the blended rent growth was actually 20 bps above the same time last year.
One more interesting tidbit: Dallas Tanner said they’re seeing better leasing velocity for build-to-rent than for traditional SFR. He said: “We've seen better velocity in our own book of business on the BTR leasing side. There seems to be like a pickup in demand there.”
Now all eyes on the spring leasing season because not much usually happens in the winter months.
“As we exited the Labor Day period, which is traditionally pretty slow, we normally see a pickup in September, the second half of September. And that pickup was a little bit delayed. This is in terms of foot traffic and the other metrics that we're measuring from a leasing perspective. We saw that pickup in October, which gives us confidence in the momentum that we're carrying into November.”
#2 - SFR renters are still in healthy financial shape
This isn’t exactly new, but it’s worth highlighting quickly because with all the jitteriness in the economy right now, everyone is looking for signs of softening, signs of cracking.
But the apartment REITs said their renters are still in good shape financially, and the SFR REITs said the same.
Invitation said bad debt – which reflects unpaid rent – was down 20 bps. Tim Lobner, said quote, “Our customer is very healthy from a financial standpoint.”
At AMH, this topic didn’t get as much attention on the call but they did cover this same topic recently at a BofA Securities real estate conference in September. At the time, AMH COO Lincoln Palmer said their “residents are coming to the platform still have strong incomes north of $150,000, 5x multiples on rent, 2 income earners… Residents are coming in with, again, still high incomes, credit scores aren't suffering.”
Of course, that can change if the economy materially dips further … but, so far, SFR renters appear to be holding up well.
“We're not seeing any degradation of our customer… Our FICO scores look great from our customers coming in, our collections and our bad debt are exactly where we wanted to be… Our collections have been actually quite better than what we've seen historically. So there's nothing in the customer profile in our current customer base that suggests big changes are on the horizon.”
#3 - REITs are net sellers of existing homes due to today’s pricing, recycling capital into new construction
The SFR REITs continue to be net sellers of existing homes, while recycling capital into new construction. (I wrote about this more on LinkedIn today.) That’s been the case for years now.
AMH said they’re on track to deliver 2,300 new BTR homes this year. Much of that funded through dispositions – selling older properties to a group that SFR players like to call “end users,” aka … individual homebuyers, owner-occupants.
And – perhaps surprisingly – AMH reported some positive trends on their dispositions (selling to individual homebuyers). Bryan Smith said:
“Despite the headlines of a slowdown in MLS activity, we continue to see great success selling nearly 1,200 homes to end-user homebuyers year-to-date. This enables us to accretively deploy disposition proceeds into development, driving residential leading earnings contribution outside of our same-home pool while also continuing to improve the quality of our portfolio.”
At Invitation, Dallas Tanner said their company continues to recycle capital at favorable spreads:
“I feel comfortable saying that our disposition strategy where we can continue to sell homes between a 4% and a 4.5% cap and accretively reinvest either in share buyback or new acquisitions that are in the, call it, 6 cap range with really good revenue growth profiles in front of them will continue to be accretive way to create shareholder value.”
Part of that capital recycling strategy, Invitation’s CIO Scott Eisen said, is to buy excess inventory from homebuilders eager to offload homes they’ve been unable to sell.
Scott said “it’s been widely reported that the homebuilders have had a lot of inventory, and they've been trying to sell homes, have deliveries in 30 days. And so I think, for us, it's been a great opportunistic way for us not only to pick up homes at 20+ percent discounts to market value, but also get a home for almost immediate delivery that we can put into the market and hopefully get leased within 60, 90 days.
At AMH, Bryan Smith was also asked about the potential to acquire smaller SFR portfolios, and he offered up some interesting color reflecting the same headwinds on acquisitions:
Of potential acquisition opportunities from smaller SFR players: “I think there's still a little bit of a disconnect with owners expecting to be able to get end user homeowner pricing in terms of their market value expectations. So we haven't seen a lot of change there. What we've looked at is generally characterized by high 4 caps, maybe 5 at best. But there's still a little bit of a gap between their pricing and what we would need to be able to do anything at scale.”
#4 - The SFR REITs are considering stock buybacks due to widened discount versus NAV
This was a big topic for SFR and apartment REITs alike. No one likes to see their stock trading at big discounts versus net asset value (NAV). So when your stock collectively is worth less than the sum of the parts, it gets more attractive to buy back stock at a perceived discount… plus investors tend to like that as a positive signal that you’re putting your money where your mouth is. (Now an even more heightened topic with Centerspace’s announcement that it’s exploring “strategic alternatives.”
Invitation Homes announced a its board had authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $500 million.
CEO Dallas Tanner said: “We certainly want to have this be one of the tools in our tool belt if the stock price is going to stay in these ranges for some period of time. So we'll, obviously, look for opportunities to use it.”
“We've been, obviously, as frustrated as probably most of our residential peers have been in terms of the dislocation between public values and private values… We're certainly seeing private transactions trade at much lower implied cap rates than where public market valuations sit today. But we've been in this business long enough and in and around real estate long enough to know that there are cycles to it. And sometimes, things don't make sense, specifically in the public space. And so we just keep our heads down, and we'll keep recycling capital in a way that's meaningful.”
For their part, AMH said they’re considering it but also called it a “double-edged sword,” worrying about potential risk of “reducing future capacity to create value through incremental growth.”
“Stock buybacks are definitely something that we're watching very closely…With that said, we are very mindful that stock buybacks can be a little bit of a double-edged sword as we think about them in terms of increasing leverage and then reducing future capacity to create value through incremental growth. But look, at the right levels, buybacks can definitely make sense. I would remind you that we have an active share repurchase program already in place. We have been active on it in years past at the right levels.”
#5 - SFR REITs are cautiously optimistic on 2026
Sure, you’d expect them to be optimistic, but it’s still helpful to understand how the REITs are thinking about 2026.
At AMH, their leadership team said that an intense focus on lease expiration management – and in particular, shifting expirations out of the cold-weather months will better position for them for 2026.
Bryan Smith said he “would expect to see those benefits on the occupancy side. The rent growth will return in the spring leasing season next year.”
Dallas Tanner at Invitation said he still feels really good about the renewal side of the equation, and for them, renewals are three-quarters of their leases. He said “we don't see anything that suggests that changes going into next year” given barriers to purchase, essential role of housing, strong financial shape of their customer base, etc.
But he did add another caveat, he said supply is “hard to forecast” and could still be a factor – given SFR is shaped not only by new build-to-rent homes, but also the fluid movement of individually owned homes in and out of the rental pool.
And while we know BTR supply will be down next year, there’s some question about that latter category of accidental landlords.
— Now Spinning on The Rent Roll Podcast —
The Rent Roll with Jay Parsons podcast continues to frequently rank in the Top 100 podcasts on Apple’s charts for investing-themed podcasts. Thank you for helping us grow so quickly. New episodes are released every Thursday morning (though we did take a vacation last week – our first off week since Christmas. Back at it this week!).
Episode 59: 5 Takeaways from the SFR REITs’ Q3’25 Earnings Calls Plus a Conversation with Progress Residential’s CEO, Dave Feldman.
Episode 58: 5 Takeaways from the Apartment REITs’ Q3’25 Earnings Calls with Mizuho’s Haendel St. Juste.
Episode 57: Is It Time to Worry? Plus a Conversation with Middleburg CEO Chris Finlay
Episode 56: Budgeting Season: Tips for 2026 with Gables Residential’s Sue Ansel
Episode 55: Q4’25 Apartment Market Update & Outlook with Kettler’s Alyson Bode
Episode 54: Is Now the Time to Build Again? with JPI’s Payton Mayes, Mollie Fadule and Kyley Harvey.
Episode 53: The Case for Family-Friendly Class A Apartments with Bobby Fijan
Episode 52: Q3’25 SFR Update & Outlook with Invitation Homes’ Scott Eisen
