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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Today, institutional landlordsthose owning more than 1,000 homesremain a relatively small part of the national single-family housing market. They own less than 1.0% of the total U.S. single-family housing stock and have accounted for only about 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. Yet, two decades ago, they didnt even really exist. When Blackstone began buying single-family rentals in 2011, there wasnt a single firm that owned at least 1,000 U.S. single-family homes. By late 2016, Blackstones fund, Invitation Homeswhich the firm later took public in 2017 and fully exited by 2019had grown its portfolio to nearly 50,000 single-family rentals. As of the end of Q3 2025, Invitation Homes wholly owned 86,139 single-family rentals. Institutional funds buying at the bottom of the housing crash, from 2011 to 2013, marked the birth of the modern institutional single-family rental asset class. Sean Dobson, CEO and chairman of the Amherst Groupwhich, according to Parcl Labs, owns at least 42,973 single-family rentalssaw that shift firsthand. After the federal government tightened lending, the housing bubble burst, and single-family homes began selling below replacement cost, the government was practically begging institutional capital to step into the market around 2010, believing they could serve as a shock absorber. Dobson illustrates the point by noting, When we [Amherst] first started this [single-family rental] business, we had a handshake to buy 50,000 houses from Fannie Mae in one trade. While that trade didnt occur, it illustrates the backdrop at the time. On Friday, Dobson will be among the speakers at ResiDay 2025a one-day conference hosted by ResiClub in New York City. I did a pre-interview with Dobson (the full video is posted on YouTube). Below are some of his key takeaways. National home prices: Grinding sideways, with affordability as the constraint Dobson emphasized that the housing market is unlikely to see dramatic national home price swings in the near term. Neither another national boom, nor crash. He admits theres some downward pressure on home prices, given the affordability environment were in, however, theres not enough resale supply hitting the market to actually manifest a national level crash like 2007-2011. According to Dobson: Home prices we think would be lower if there are more sellers, obviously. But there’s good reason there aren’t more sellers, right? So many people got such low interest rate mortgages that at a time when the demand would naturally fall from rising interest rates, rising interest rates also caused the [new listings] supply to fall. I think the overall message is that we’re on the lookout for something that changes the velocity of this whole thing and [we] can’t find it. We spent a lot of time on the Airbnb guys. I thought those guys might be the weak hands, because it’s like, who has to sell? And we have a pretty good model on how supply affects home prices. But even when you just radically change supply, it moves home prices [down] in single digits we think you’re looking at a decade of difficulties for people to get into buying a home. That’s why we think we’re talking about really a next decade of a lot of demand for rental, because it’s the choice of, how do I get the size, how do I get the features that come with that home, like the school location? And that’s how long we think it’s going to take for what we would see as sort of long-term depth of some of the standards for affordability to be recaptured, because we think it has to come from income growth. And that’s staring in the face of all this business and AI, which [some] people are arguing might be driving [real incomes] down [in the future]. Fixing affordability starts with housing credit reform The further the Pandemic Housing Boom fades into the rearview mirrorand as national income growth continues to outpace national home price growthDobson believes national housing affordability will gradually improve. That could be sped up, he says, if some of lending tightening done during and following the Great Financial Crisis were un-done. His argument isnt to recreate the reckless lending of the mid-2000s, but to reintroduce responsible credit risk-taking and allow back in some of the lower credit homebuyers that were in the market in, say, the 1980s and 1990s. In Dobsons view, if lending were loosened to allow some of those lower credit score homebuyers back into the market, it wouldnt magically improve affordability overnight; however, it would create a steady stream of housing demand for builders who could produce more lower-end single-family homesor even manufactured homesthat werent bilt in the years following the Great Financial Crisis. He believes that would improve affordability over time. Says Dobson: We get consulted by governors, by senior people in the federal government. Everyone kind of wants the playbook: Tell me what to do and I’ll fix it. And we tell them [to] make more subprime mortgages. And they tend to fold up their notebooks and head on… People are frustrated, right? People are super frustrated because you have this expectation that: I did all these things, and now I should be able to buy a house, and I can’t. You want to blame somebody, right? And if you see me [Amherst] buying it, well, you’re like, well, it must be his fault, so I get itI think it [that thinking] is dangerous. They [homebuilders] don’t have demand [from that lower credit score homebuyers like they used to], and they don’t have demand because their customers don’t have financing. And they [some sidelined buyers] don’t have financing because the mortgage market doesn’t take credit risk like [it used to]… So what we [Amherst] provide is a solution today. Tightened credit boxed out homebuyers and helped draw institutional capital into the housing market Dobson says the typical Amherst tenant has a credit score too low to qualify for a mortgage in todays market. Without single-family rental options, many of those households wouldnt be able to live in the same neighborhoods or school districts they do now, he argues. That challenge reflects a broader shift in the mortgage market. In Q1 1999, borrowers in the bottom 10th percentile of mortgage credit scores had scores of 597. By Q3 2025, that threshold had risen to 660, reflecting that many lower-credit households had been locked out of homeownership following the bust, Dobson says. In Dobsons view, those tighter lending standardsimplemented after the housing bust that began in 2006helped pave the way for institutional investors like Amherst to step in and fill the gap through single-family rentals. Says Dobson: I sat with Chairman Bernanke, I sat with Yellen, and I begged them to try to get in the way of Dodd-Frank, because I knew what was going to happen, and we lost that. I said, Okay, well, we’re going to get these families in these houses some way, and we have a lease and we have financing, we can operate the real estate. So let’s get the people in the homes and get their kids in the schools, and then let all the wizards figure out, like, whats the better solution? Because today, there isn’t one until someone with a 625 FICO can go borrow money at about the same rate that you and I can borrow at, there isn’t a better solution. And so that’s, you know, if you want to blame somebody, it’s the knee jerk, explainable, but too long in place reaction to the subprime mortgage crisis. Greater homebuilding activity is helping improve affordability more quickly in Florida and Texas During our conversation, I asked him for his thoughts on the current regional housing market variationspecifically, why pockets of Florida and Texas have weakened more than markets in the Midwest and Northeast. According to Dobson: The common theme amongst the markets that are retracing? So Austin, you mentioned Jacksonville, which is not quite as bad Western Floridathe Tampa Bay area, Cape Coral has been really, been really tough. I would say the common theme is those are places [where] it’s pretty easy to build, and as home prices moved above, kind of their construction costs, they naturally kind of tend back down. And so those places, the market did what the market is supposed to do, right? Prices were rising and rising quickly, and homebuilders came in and they built a lot of supply, even in a place like Dallas. So we [Amherst] tend to spend [time looking at local data]because we’re like you [ResiClub], were in the housing market [data] all day, every day. So we don’t really do that much work on like the U.S. housing market. We do work on much smaller micro footprints. But if you take a place like DallasDallas overall [in aggregate], seems like it’s okay, healthy, not great, [but] not weak. But if you bifurcate the homes by vintage year, and look at their price movements, then Dallas looks a lot like Cape Coral [in certain areas]. The new home construction market [areas] in Dallas looks a lot like Cape Coral. So builders came outthey did, you know, getting land permitted, getting lots of them platted, getting horizontals in all takes time. So there’s always a lag between when the housing market really wants to buy the homes and when builders can deliver them. And that oftentimes [it] creates too much supply [at once] trying to squeeze through a channel that [also has] waning demand. Institutional single-family homebuying has slowedcould it accelerate again? At the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom, institutional homeownersthose owning at least 1,000 single-family homesmade up an all-time high of 2.4% of home purchases in Q2 2022, according to John Burns Research and Consulting. That period, at the tail end of the boom, was when yields were particularly attractive as borrowing costs were ultra-low, home prices were soaring, and rents were climbing rapidly. However, since mortgage rates spiked and capital markets shifted, their share has fallen to around 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. The math isnt as favorable now. What, if anything, could pull more institutional capital back into the single-family housing market? According to Dobson: We really think the answer to that question comes in this investor adoption question, right? Will state pension funds allocate and scale to single-family rental? The time that we’ve had to operate the [single-family] real estate has also made that core investor group aware that you can collect rents [from single-family rentals], you can provide good service, you can operate this as a piece of real estate. That track record is helpful, but the next wave of investing won’t come from the same sources of capital [private equity]. It’ll come from those core investors [like pension funds] finally saying, You know what, a 5% or 6% cash on cash return that outpaces inflation by 50 plus percent every year has a spot in my portfolio and scale.
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E-Commerce
Drilling for minerals deep in the ocean could have immense consequences for the tiny animals at the core of the vast marine food web and ultimately affect fisheries and the food we find on our plates, according to a new study.Deep-sea mining means drilling the seafloor for “polymetallic nodules” loaded with critical minerals including copper, iron, zinc and more. While not yet commercialized, nations are pursuing deep-sea operations amid rising demand for these minerals in electric vehicles and other parts of the energy transition, as well as for technology and military use.The researchers examined water and waste gathered from a deep-sea mining trial in 2022. What the study discovered University of Hawaii researchers studied an area of the Pacific Ocean called the “twilight zone,” about 650-5,000 feet (200-1,500 meters) below sea level. Their peer-reviewed findings, published Thursday in the Nature Communications scientific journal, say mining waste could affect anything from tiny shrimp smaller than .08 inches (2 millimeters) long to fish 2 inches (5 centimeters) long.That’s because, after mining companies bring the mineral-rich nodules up to the surface, they have to release excess sea water, ocean floor dirt and sediment back into the ocean. That creates a murky plume of particles about the same size as the naturally occurring food particles normally eaten by the zooplankton that swim at that depth.That’s a little more than half of the zooplankton in the ocean. If those organisms eat the waste particles what senior study author Brian Popp called “junk food” then that affects 60% of micronekton that eat the zooplankton.And that undernourishment is a problem because these tiny organisms are the food source up the chain ultimately affecting commercially important fish such as mahi mahi or tuna.“Surface fish can dive down deep into the water, they feed on organisms down at depth,” said Michael Dowd, study lead author and oceanography graduate student. “If these organisms down at depth are no longer present because their food web has collapsed, then that can impact higher food webs and more commercial interests.” Impact on the water and alternative sources While other research has highlighted the negative environmental impacts from deep-sea mining of nodules, the focus is often the seafloor. This study looks at mid-water.The researchers said more work needs to be done to assess the appropriate quality and depth at which dirty water and sediment from sea mining could be returned to the ocean. But they said returning the excess directly to the ocean floor or at other depths could be just as environmentally disruptive as in the “twilight zone,” only in different ways.Popp said digging up the deep sea might not be necessary, and instead noted alternative sources of metals, including recycling batteries and electronics, or sifting through mining waste and tailings.“If only a single company is mining in one single spot, it’s not going to affect a huge fishery. It’s not going to affect a huge amount of water. But if many companies are mining for many years and outputting a lot of material, this is going to spread across the region,” Dowd said. “And the more mining occurs, the more a problem it could be.” Where deep-sea mining stands It might not be viable to simply halt ocean mining. The International Seabed Authority that governs mineral activity beyond national jurisdiction has already granted several contracts for exploration.In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed interest in deep-sea mining operations amid tense trade negotiations with China that have limited U.S. access to China’s wide swath of critical minerals. In April, Trump signed an executive order directing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expedite the permitting process for companies to mine the ocean floor, and in May, the administration said it would consider selling leases to extract minerals off the South Pacific island of American Samoa. Last month, NOAA sent a draft rule to the White House to streamline operations.Environmental groups have advocated against deep-sea mining, citing not only the direct harm to wildlife and parts of the sea, but also the disturbance of planet-warming carbon dioxide that is currently sequestered in the ocean and on its floor.“It was well laid out in the study that the impacts wouldn’t necessarily be just the depth that the plume is released,” said Sheryl Murdock, a deep-sea postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study. “The question being: Is it worth a few minerals to potentially destroy the way that the oceans function?”Diva Amon, a marine biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, praised the research for examining potential consequences.“All of this could lead to species illness, species movement, species death. And depending on the scale of this, that could have graver repercussions, like species extinctions,” said Amon, who wasn’t involved in the study but has previously worked with some of the researchers.“There’s a lot more research that needs to be done to be able to make an informed decision about how to manage this industry, if it does start, in a way that will prevent, essentially, serious harm to the ocean and ocean ecosystem.” Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org. Read more of AP’s climate coverage. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Alexa St. John, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Over the last two years, the value of content has collapsed. Thanks to the LLM revolution, the internet is drowning in an avalanche of indistinguishable output: an endless parade of fast-food writing, recycled reports, and SEO-bait fluff optimized for algorithms instead of people. Thats why the only competitive moat left is the human story. For business leaders, this creates an urgent mandate: Storytelling is no longer a marketing tactic. Its a strategic business imperativethe only reliable engine for changing minds and shifting behaviors. If your brands narrative isnt uniquely human and demonstrably ownable, it will vanish in the churn. Heres how to find the stories only your company can tell, and why theyre your last true moat. RECOGNIZE THE NEW DISCOVERY REALITY Its tempting to see generative AI as a shortcut to content volume. But when every competitor can churn out a thousand posts, the value of each piece approaches zero. Audiences know this, and theyre tuning out. Trust in the media is near-historic lows. Our Brand Expectations Index shows that 81% of the general public and 84% of knowledge workers trust direct communication from companies, whether in podcasts, videos, or in-depth articles, nearly as much as they trust local news. Even the best SEO playbooks or algorithm hacks are no longer enough. The only thing that cuts through is a story that sparks a gut-level connection. Your mandate: Stop publishing for the algorithm. Start crafting narratives so bold, so human, that your audience chooses to pay attention. EMBRACE THE WHITE SPACE MANDATE This isnt creativity for creativitys sake. Its about strategic differentiation. The first step is proving your story has true, ownable value. Thats the white space mandate: Use data and rigorous analysis to find the strategic gaps your competitors havent filled. Technology for insight, not content. Audit the media and competitor landscape. Map where theyre over-indexing and identify the questions audiences are still asking but not getting answered. Thats the white spacethe open territory where a new conversation can take root. The power of the pivot. This process often forces a shift. The narrative your CEO thinks is critical may be saturated. White space analysis reveals the sharper angle, the uncomfortable, or the unexpected perspective thats necessary to stand out. Ive seen companies discover that the message they were clinging to was indistinguishable from five rivals, while the story that truly set them apart was hiding in plain sight. FIND THE UN-GENERATABLE NARRATIVE Once youve identified white space, the real work begins: filling it with something AI cannot generate. Thats the un-generatable narrativea story born of lived experience, not scraped data. You uncover it through what I call story-mining, deliberate conversations with leaders, employees, and stakeholders to unearth personal conviction, anecdotes, and hidden ambition. The anecdote as anchor. AI can summarize your mission statement; it cannot recreate the founders pivotal failure or the late-night insight that led to a breakthrough. These details are specific, emotional, and unforgettable. They create a narrative that is impossible for a machine to fabricate. Conviction is contagious. When a story is proven to be unique through data and delivered with authentic conviction, it stops being mere communication. It becomes a persuasive argument capable of moving markets and shifting behaviors. THE ONLY FOUNDATION FOR TRUST In an era of content saturation, brands can no longer compete in volume. They must compete with meaning. The stories that will power your business forward arent the ones easily generated. Theyre the ones painstakingly discovered, strategically proven, and deeply human. Because in a world of infinite content, meaning is your only engine for trust. Tyler Perry is the co CEO of Mission North.
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E-Commerce
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