Thanks to technology, RoofStock allows real estate investors to manage their holdings similar to portfolio investments — and now it’s eyeing various markets across the country. The website that lets investors purchase tenant-occupied, single-family rental homes is now listing homes in Miami and Los Angeles.
“Miami represents a natural extension of our Florida presence, and has been a market characterized by strong rental demand and historically has attracted considerable interest from investors, both domestic and global,” said Gregor Watson, chairman and cofounder of Roofstock.
“Southern California is one of the largest and most dynamic economies in the U.S., and given supply constraints in California, represents excellent potential for rental growth and home price appreciation over time.”
Once again, we see the Uber-ization of real estate successfully unfold in another venture.
Screenshot of a couple properties available on Roofstock.com in Miami, Florida.
The expansion is both obvious and inevitable: Miami and L.A. have hot markets and Roofstock wants to offer its services to investors in these metros.
“Our goal is to expand into different markets on a quarterly basis,” Watson said. “We will have very good national coverage by the first quarter of next year.”
Roofstock is also currently available in Atlanta, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Riverside-San Bernardino and Southwest Florida.
Changing the traditional model
Watson is the chairman and a co-founders of Roofstock alongside CEO Gary Beasly. At the time Watson was conjuring up the idea of Roofstock, he owned around 1,500 rental properties in Texas.
While looking to offload about 500 of those homes to reposition himself in the Atlanta market, he realized there was not a modern, viable infrastructure in place to sell investment properties.
Screenshot of properties available on Roofstock.com in the Los Angeles area.
“Really, the goal with Roofstock is to separate investing from operations,” Watson said. “We want to make sure that when someone invests in this sector, they don’t have to worry about someone calling them to tell them the water heater broke or the tenant wants to leave and they need to find new ones.”
Opening doors to new investors
“A big part of what we’ve done is we’ve now created accessibility to a fragmented market,” Watson said.
He described how the historically fragmented market of single-family rental properties now has global access — investors don’t need to know a repairman in a respective city, or a contractor.
“You just have to know the website, and you can invest from anywhere in the world,” he said.
Roofstock is a marketplace with curated homes for buyers and sellers. Watson said that he wants to be able to provide variety for buyers, but also understands that if certain types of properties generate a lot of traction, he wants to be able to meet that demand.
