Cushman & Wakefield appointed its first head of single-family rentals as the firm looks to beef up its business in a property type that's attracting major investors such as Warren Buffett even with a slowdown in rental rates.
The brokerage said it promoted Jeremy Edmiston to executive director of its U.S. build-to-rent single-family business for single family properties. In filling this new role, Edmiston will collaborate with the firm’s capital markets and debt teams to provide unified build-to-rent services to Cushman & Wakefield clients.
Edmiston, who's based in Dallas, said he expects to see heightened interest in build-to-rent property. Investment "is accelerating and we expect further expansion regarding the deployment of domestic and global institutional capital to surge in coming years," he said in a statement.
The single-family residential sector has recently attracted the intention of major investors and real estate companies.
In the second quarter, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought more than $700 million of stock in major homebuilders, a development some take as a positive sign for the real estate market. The investment giant picked up shares from D.R. Horton, NVR and Lennar, according to information in a filing it made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Most of the investment was made in D.R. Horton, the nation's largest homebuilder that's upping its stake in single-family rentals.
However, last month, nationwide rent growth for single-family houses continued its 17-month slide, housing data firm CoreLogic reported. That growth rate is the lowest posted in three years. It comes as prices posted a 2.6% year-over-year gain in September.
At Cushman, Edmiston has played a central role in the creation of the brokerage's single-family rentals initiative, "building this new sector for our business from the ground up,” Woody Stone, president of multifamily asset services, said in a statement.
Edmiston previously served as Cushman's senior managing director of single family rentals. Before working at Cushman & Wakefield, he served as an executive at Pinnacle Property Management Services, a firm Cushman & Wakefield acquired in March 2020.
He also worked at apartment giant Greystar from 2002-2012.