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The Decision Science Platform

Powering today’s most successful SFR portfolios.

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Find out how we use data science and institutional-quality modeling to power faster SFR acquisitions across markets.

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See how we apply property and market insight to predict maintenance needs, automate workflows, and delight residents.

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Discover the optimization tools that will change the way institutional investors manage SFR portfolios for long-term growth.

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Picket Year in Review

December 20, 2022

The Picket team had quite a year—as did the SFR sector and the economy at large.

In the midst of one of the greatest domestic migration events in decades, single-family rentals became the residences of choice for an increasing number of Americans and the investment of choice for an increasing number of institutional investors. A roaring job market offset the first growls of inflation, and the real estate market remained hot, high-priced, and high-value against a backdrop of persistently limited housing supply.

With the spotlight of the Fed turning quickly on ballooning inflation in the last three quarters, the real estate market in particular has felt the effect. Buyers wait for list prices to respond to higher mortgage interest rates and depressed demand. Sellers wait for better reasons to give up the low mortgage interest rates they locked in over the past several years. More consumers decide to rent homes for the dual benefit of lower monthly expenditures and increased flexibility. And rents stay elevated across the hottest markets in America.

Picket has closely monitored these shifting dynamics while navigating a steady course. Our mandate remains clear: Build the team and technology that will transform the experience of renting a home.  

Through multiple product launches, world-class data science, blazing market expansion, and exciting team growth, Picket is positioned to lead in the SFR space as capital deployment accelerates and single-family renters become the dominant demographic in the housing landscape.

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SFR fundamentals are proving their durability. 

Despite the pull-back of acquisition activity in the SFR space during the last three months, the underlying supply and demand fundamentals that drove enthusiasm for the sector remain strong. 

Nadia Evangelou, a senior economist and director of forecasting for the National Association of Realtors, estimates we have a nationwide housing shortage of roughly 5 million homes.  Meanwhile, according to an Apartment List survey in April 2022, the proportion of Millennials who plan to ‘always rent,’ continues steadily climbing and now includes nearly 25% of the generation. The data demonstrate that Gen Z preferences are following suit.  It’s no surprise, then, that rents continue to grow in markets with great weather, affordable cost of living, and strong job markets. And economists predict those same markets will enjoy persistent HPA growth even as home prices in some of the darlings of pandemic-era in-migration come back down to earth (a la Boise, Austin, Salt Lake City, Spokane). Rents drive yields, HPA drives total return, and the continued strength of both in top rental markets shows why SFR will continue to attract and reward the world’s investors.

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‍The transformation is here.

More than $110 billion of institutional capital has been earmarked for the SFR space, helping to drive up institutional ownership from its current 3% of single-family rental housing stock to a projected 10%+ by the end of the decade. 

But the demand for SFR portfolio aggregation at scale has historically outpaced the tools and services available to support it. That, we’re happy to report, is now changing. The real estate technology landscape has evolved dramatically in the last couple years. 

We recently attended IMN’s 10th annual Single Family Rental Forum in Scottsdale, and the exhibit hall was packed with solutions providers for every facet of the investor journey. While we count ourselves among them, we believe our approach to solving the unique challenges of SFR investing and management at scale will not only stand the test of time but emerge as the gold standard in the industry. 

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Goodbye, point solutions. Hello, robust investment platforms.

The SFR technology sector is following a familiar ‘disruption’ trajectory. 

Phase 1

‍Legacy operators, cobbling together home-built solutions to the emerging problems of continued growth, post revenue gains ploddingly but convincingly, turning the heads of innovators and capital providers who have long overlooked the industry. 

Phase 2

‍Operators from within the industry and technologists from beyond it set out to find a better way to scale. They begin tackling one link in the value chain at a time, spurring minor reformations and useful optimizations within the realm of discreet problem sets. The rapid successes of these emerging solutions rely on legacy operators adopting them into existing infrastructure. 

Phase 3

More ambitious capital and more ambitious innovators enter the space to seize a greater opportunity: transforming the whole system. In this paradigm, point solutions are no longer sufficient to the cause; ‘A better way’ demands a completely revolutionary approach, backed by world-class technology. 

In the transportation industry, that third phase of reformation was led by Uber. In retail, it was Amazon. In hospitality, Airbnb. In automotive, Tesla.

In residential real estate (drum roll), it’s Picket. 

Picket’s mission is to become the world’s first consumer housing brand. 

  • To do that, we need to earn the opportunity to bring hundreds of thousands of homes under our management. 
  • To do that, we need to create the most rewarding experience for residents. 
  • To do that, we need to build ground-breaking home management technology and work with clients who share our conviction that better renting experiences yield far better returns. 
  • To do that, we need to help those scale-seeking investors access the opportunity in SFR by providing the most robust all-in-one platform for acquisitions, property management, and long-term portfolio optimization. 
  • To do that, we need the best: 

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Data + data science + data people.

In 2022, we made significant progress in the early phases of our work to become the world’s first consumer housing brand. Looking back from the vantage of year’s end, we’re taking stock of the milestones as we gear up for another big 12 months ahead.

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01  |  A better way to analyze investment opportunities

We are developing the most comprehensive data set and most sophisticated automated analysis for single-family rental investing in the industry. The investment module of our Decision Science platform (Decision Science Invest) has grown in scope and added functionality throughout the year.

  • We expanded our coverage to include more than 20 new markets throughout the Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest.
  • We launched new dynamic mapping tools that allow investors and analysts to plot SFR investment opportunities against the backdrop of beautifully-visualized, hyper-local data sets, like income growth, population growth, school and safety scores, walkability, nearby features or detractions (including grocery stores, schools, transmission lines, freeways), and more.

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Decision Science Invest - Mapping Tools-low
New mapping tools in Decision Science Invest
  • Our automated valuation models, tax estimates, and HPA growth projections continue to improve with the infusion of additional data sets covering more markets and more homes.
  • We are preparing to roll out a new market intelligence product in January 2023 designed to help investors discover their next buying opportunities using data-backed insight into SFR supply and demand signals across and within specific markets. Stand by for MarketIQ announcements to come.

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MarketIQ Sneak Preview
  • We continued to build the most advanced data science and engineering team in the SFR technology space, adding offices in Wrocław, Poland, and Hanoi, Vietnam, along with seasoned technology leaders including Gabriel Gajecki, Piotr Buszka, and Filip Witkowski.

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02  |  A better way to manage transactions

Helping institutional investors pinpoint investment opportunities at the market and asset level is not enough. We want to help them transact with speed and with complete confidence that every detail in the acquisition process has been handled with rigorous attention to detail.

  • We armed clients and our own brokerage services team with a new transaction management system that streamlines and tracks the critical steps from offer to close to provide complete transparency and unmatched efficiency through the entire acquisition process.  
  • We added new communication tools across the Decision Science Invest platform to facilitate more fluid, automated messaging between our clients, agents, and transaction services providers.  

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DS Transact
Transaction management system in Decision Science Invest

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03  |  A better way to rent

The ambition of our all-in-one SFR investing platform is to make the process of buying and managing homes across markets seamless and efficient for our clients. Equally important, we want to make the process of renting a home easy and delightful for our residents. We’re here to tackle both sides of this experience with superior technology and exceptional resident services at scale.

  • This year, we brought nearly a thousand homes under management across seven states.
  • We added veteran leadership to our property management team, with special emphasis on renovations and vendor management. Tieg Maze joined us as our property management leader, bringing with him extensive experience across national renovations management, construction, and property operations. Justin McKee, our recently onboarded procurement leader, brings more than twenty years of experience in resource planning, purchasing, and strategy development in the residential building and management space.
  • Designed specifically for institutional investors, our property management technology platform (Decision Science Manage) is growing more robust by the day, ingesting property data, tracking marketing and leasing activity, managing maintenance requests and vendor communique, and offering reporting tools at the asset and portfolio level.
  • While online payments have been a central feature of our Resident Portal from the beginning, we released Autopay in Q4 to make it even easier for our residents to make and track rent payments each month.
  • Through the care and conscientiousness of Joe Torres' Resident Services Team, we’ve achieved a 4.7-star rating (and climbing!) on Google Reviews, making our wholly-owned Elara Property Management subsidiary one of the highest-rated national PMs.

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Work Orders
Maintenance request tracking in Decision Science Manage

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04  |  A better version of home

All of our work accrues to one vision of a better version of home. To the extent homeownership was a fixture of the modern American Dream, we’re seeing that dream evolve. But in our minds, the American Dream has never relied on owning more than one’s own destiny, and in that dream, home – not homeownership – has a distinctive role to play. We’re focused on making the experience of a stable, beautiful, affordable home more accessible to more people by directing enlightened capital its way. We’re excited and humbled by all that vision entails. Three years into our journey, we couldn’t be more optimistic about what the next years hold as we continue to invest in the future of home.  

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