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50 their price range and desired locale—a boon for rental investors as those potential buyers find themselves renting for longer than they might have otherwise. However, will the rental market take a hit when the market eventually corrects? Will renters have time to find a home before an investor buying frenzy in the event of a shift to a buyer's market? "If we're buying the cheap properties and creating more rentals, we're just creating more rentals," Tenenbaum said. "Are we going to oversupply the rental market? Possibly." ere's certainly no shortage of interest in investing on the single-family rental (SFR) front. Kevin Ortner, CEO, Renters Warehouse, said, "Even the institutional capital has shifted their view on single-family rental to more of a long- term investment. ere aren't a lot of people being spooked by talks of a potential recession in 2020." With rents on the rise in many areas, Ortner said that SFR investors are seeing strong yields in markets where they can rehab properties into rentals. "We've seen both wholesalers and rehabbers beginning not just to buy and sell property but also start to build up a sizable rental portfolio as well." Indeed, Mark Gannaway, CEO, Arcana Insurance Services, told DS News that single- family rental investment has become an easy entry point for many investors along the way toward diversifying into other areas. "ese investors that have spent all this capital in learning how to do this are now trying to find a way to apply their new education in purchasing properties." "Every market creates an opportunity to invest," said Dani Beit-Or, Founder and CEO, Simply Do It. "It's just a matter of how you will capture that opportunity." THE CHANGING MARKET MAKEUP Whether it's the institutional money that entered the sector in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crash or smaller individual investors, Beit-Or said that the investment landscape is a much safer environment than it was in the days leading up to that crisis. "Investors today are working in a more constrained environment because the lending standards are tougher," Beit-Or said. "e appraisal process is different. So even those who just went and bought a house without doing their research, they're doing it in much safer environment than before the crash." at's a good thing, because one trend mentioned by several of the people DS News spoke to is the influx of newbie investors with dreams of fixing and flipping their way to an easy fortune—and we can thank TV for that. "Last I counted, there are 47 different reality TV shows based on fixing and flipping alone," Sells joked. Home flippers have become an easy punchline thanks to the popularity of shows glamorizing the process, but there seems to be no arguing with the fact that it's having a real impact on the sort of people who are entering the investment landscape for the first time. And unfortunately, the lessons of HGTV don't always translate well into the real world. "ose shows make it look a lot easier than it is," Ortner said. "Every flip and rehab they do on those shows makes money. at's not the reality." Tenenbaum told DS News that this influx of greenhorns has driven many more experienced investors away from fix-and-flip and into more long-term property investments. "A lot of them are saying, 'If I'm not making 50 grand, it's not worth my time,'" Tenenbaum said. "e ones who can wash, rinse, repeat and get $10,000 a door, consistently, are still in the fix-and-flip game, however." "Traditional homebuyers (not investors) are just playing the wait- and-see game. They don't want to buy right now because they're afraid they'll end up in upside-down mortgages. They're all just hanging tight, not wanting to make that move." —Charles Sells, Founder and Managing Director, The PIP Group

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