In this month's episode of Onward, CEO Ben Miller and co-host Cardiff Garcia are joined by Fundrise COO Brandon Jenkins to discuss one of the most exciting and fast-growing segments of Fundrise’s real estate investment strategy: built-for-rent single-family housing.

As the Fundrise portfolio delivered its best-ever performance in 2021 and its greatest outperformance relative to public stocks (specifically, the S&P 500 index total return) in the first half of 2022, we’ve been able to leverage our understanding of national demographic shifts to become trailblazers in the fast-growing built-to-rent space. Listen to the episode to hear Fundrise’s leadership discuss key elements of our strategy so far, including:

  • Why Fundrise’s strategy is so different from the controversial approach taken by institutional investors, who are buying single-family homes directly on the retail market — and why Fundrise’s approach should actually help ease home prices for individual buyers.
  • The observation we made years ago at a Phoenix apartment community that led to us exploring built-for-rent as a scalable strategy.
  • How the principles of “affordability and sensibility” have influenced the exact ways we’ve entered this part of the market.

And finally, we answer more hard-hitting questions from real Fundrise investors, including a follow-up to last month’s episode of Onward, where we discussed the brand new Innovation Fund, our entry into the world of Venture Capital. Specifically, hear Ben address the question of, “What business does a real estate company really have investing in an entirely new financial space?”

All this and more in the latest episode of Onward.