American Homes 4 Rent & Other Useful Comparisons

[Callum K.]

As a landlord with several dozen properties, does anyone utilize publicly traded SFR property rental businesses such as American Homes 4 Rent, Starwood Waywood Residential Trust, Blackstone's Invitation Homes, etc to help gauge comparisons between what us small fish do versus these large landlords?

I personally have found myself sifting through a recent debt financing structure American Homes 4 Rent completed on ~$500M of property guaranteed loans. The structure resembled most of my SFR mortgages, however their terms are not as lucrative as mine are (such as 10yr notes vs my 30yr fixed notes).

Furthermore, I also have spent some time sifting through these publicly traded entities reports and some of these guys are operating significantly less efficient than I am (such as 20%-30% vacancy rates).  I have found these metrics to be tremendously useful in gauging localized market trends since they often report on a per market basis while also providing me insight as to whether or not I am operating efficiently.

Finally, as these public companies are relatively new to the the world I am paying close attention to what they are doing and how they operate... Not to replicate them, but to help identify areas where I can exploit and provide a better solution (such as quicker turnarounds between renters than some of these guys' typical 90+ day average).  Given their size, I see additional costs such as greater regulation, higher management and admin costs, and more rigidity.

I'd love to hear if anyone else is using these public companies as gauges/metrics for their own portfolio's and I certainly recognize that its probably not applicable to many here given that most people seem to invest in flips or lower income properties.