The April 2016 New Residential Construction report from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau released this week, which measures quarterly housing starts and completions by purpose and design, found that single-family built-for-rent homes comprised 4 point 3 percent of all housing starts during the first quarter. That share is higher than the historical average of 2 point 8 percent but down from its peak of 5 point 8 percent which occurred in early 2013.
For the last four quarters, single-family homes built-for-rent have totaled about 32 thousand, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That number has been on the rise—research from John Burns Real Estate Consulting indicated that approximately 25 thousand single-family detached homes were built for renting in all of 2014.
About 36 percent of all residential home sales in February were all-cash transactions, according to data released by CoreLogic on Thursday. This number represents a decline of 2 point 5 percentage points year-over-year and about 11 percentage points from its peak of 47 percent reached in January 2011. CoreLogic estimates that if cash sales continue their current rate of decline, they will be back to their pre-crisis average of 25 percent by the middle of 2018.