Tricon Residential and Pacific Life Insurance have joined forces to buy up to $1.5bn (€1.2bn) worth of newly built single-family US rental homes.

The companies have formed Homebuilder Direct JV with an initial $300m equity commitment (one-third from each partner) and include the ability for investors to increase the vehicle size to $450m, representing $1.5bn of purchasing power when including leverage.

Tricon said it will serve as the asset manager and property manager of the joint venture which plans to buy up to 5,000 new single-family homes, primarily from national and regional homebuilders, including both scattered-site homes and finished build-to-rent communities.

Tricon already has a single-family rental joint venture which is focused on the organic acquisition of resale homes.

Gary Berman, president and CEO of Tricon Residential, said the Homebuilder Direct JV leverages Tricon’s longstanding relationships with homebuilders across the US and “rounds out our single-family rental acquisition strategy to include new homes, complementing our ongoing acquisition programme of resale homes in our SFR JV-1 vehicle, and the development of build-to-rent communities in our THPAS JV-1”.

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