Sarasota, Tampa become hot beds for built-to-rent homes

For those who don’t want to commit to the price tag of buying a home but want the space a house offers, build-to-rent homes can be a good option. Developers are starting to take note, according to a recent study by RentCafe, with 44,700 build-to-rent houses under construction nationwide — triple of how many were built last year.  

One of the markets where the trend is especially big is Sarasota. Over the past two years, 445 new build-to-rent homes have entered the Sarasota market. Another 770 units in Sarasota are currently under construction, the report found, putting the metro area at No. 14 in the U.S. for the number of build-to-rent homes underway.

Builders in Tampa have also embraced the trend, with a 160% surge in build-to-rent homes over the past five years, according to the report. At the end of last year, the study recorded a supply of 1,374 units. With those numbers, Tampa is No. 12 nationally for build-to-rent in the last five years. Tampa also ranked No. 6 in the U.S. for single-family rentals currently under construction, with 1,404. 

The study credits the pandemic for build-to-rent wave, as there were only some 6,000 of these categorized houses constructed annually in the U.S. prior. The momentum for these types of homes is holding steady, the report adds, with a 97% occupancy level. That's 2% more than the apartment rate. 

RentCafe, a nationwide apartment search website, based its study on metro areas that have at least 50 single-family rental units.