PPR Capital Management just began investing in the build-to-rent housing sector last year, and now it is looking to pounce on a market it sees as benefiting from the new federal housing law. 

The Wayne, Pennsylvania-based firm this week is launching the PPR Keystone Housing Growth Fund, its first-ever fund focused on build-to-rent housing. PPR executives tell Bisnow it has a fundraising target of $100M. 

Courtesy of PPR Capital Management

A build-to-rent property PPR acquired in the Nashville metro area

The fund is designed to buy build-to-rent communities from the developers that constructed them. This type of sale was ultimately allowed by the 21st Century Road to Housing Act after months of debate over a proposal that would have required these types of homes be sold to individual buyers. 

The lengthy period of uncertainty froze the BTR market and caused financial distress that PPR is looking to capitalize on.

“There’s a lot of product available across the markets we’re targeting that has been built to rent but that the builder, their original take-out isn’t there anymore,” PPR Chief Asset Officer Craig Johnsen said. “So we are targeting build-to-rent properties, but also taking the development risk out of there and buying from distressed sellers.”

He named 10 regions the firm is targeting: Dallas, Salt Lake City, Nashville, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Chicago, Raleigh, Denver, West Palm Beach and Richmond. 

The fund is raising money from accredited individual investors, and its minimum check size is $50K. It is looking to buy properties with between 150 and 250 units, and with its $100M fundraising target, Johnsen said he anticipates that would yield six to eight deals. 

Founded in 2007, PPR is a private equity firm with $1.5B in assets under management. It has historically focused on acquiring nonperforming loans and residential mortgages. The firm began buying some multifamily in 2022 before entering the BTR sector last year. 

Johnsen said there were distressed BTR situations popping up early last year even before Congress disrupted the market. An overbuilding of units in some markets made it impossible for some developers to achieve the rents they needed to hit their return projections. 

An estimated 68,000 build-to-rent housing units began construction in the U.S. last year, according to the National Association of Home Builders, below the 2024 peak of 84,000 units but above most other years this century. 

BTR housing starts soared after the pandemic and became a larger share of the single-family housing market.

Some developers that have been unable to hit their rent projections have decided to cut their losses and sell, Johnsen said. 

This was the case for the first BTR deal PPR closed in March 2025: the $87M purchase of the Highline at Knoxville in Tennessee.  

“That happened to be one where the first phase of construction was totally complete and the second phase was underway, and they were looking to get out of the deal — they could see how the economics were going,” Johnsen said. 

While these conditions existed early last year, the lengthy Road to Housing debate made it much more difficult for BTR developers to sell their assets, as prospective buyers didn’t know how the rules for the market would be rewritten. 

Now that the bill became law Saturday at midnight — without President Donald Trump’s signature — the market appears ripe for a rebound. Hunter Housing Economics President Brad Hunter told Bisnow this week that BTR “could absolutely be one of the biggest winners” of the legislation.

Johnsen described the BTR market as being “over the hurdle.”

“We’re not anticipating any additional headwinds from a regulatory standpoint for build-to-rent going forward,” he said. “So that makes it a great time, especially given one reason a building might be under distress or needs capital to take them out was because of this three- to six-month period where there was a pause.”

Much of the debate over the bill had centered on lawmakers’ concerns about large companies buying up single-family houses and pricing individuals out of the market. The law ultimately kept some restrictions for institutional investors buying single-family homes, but it included a carve-out for build-to-rent properties. 

Developers that built single-family home projects intentionally for renters did so with the plan of ultimately selling to another landlord, rather than individuals, so Johnsen said the economics wouldn’t work for them to sell homes one by one.

And he said these properties don’t present an attractive investment for homebuyers compared to renting, given the elevated interest rates and homeownership costs like association fees and maintenance. 

“The levered return on buying a townhome for a homeowner is not actually good anymore,” he said. “When I look at it in terms of PPR wanting to supply housing to people, it’s more cost-effective for a company like ourselves to experience economies of scale.”

While PPR isn’t building new housing with this fund, Johnsen said allowing developers to exit their prior projects frees them up to build more.

More build-to-rent housing is needed across the country because Americans are increasingly renting for longer periods of their lives, but some still want the comfort of a single-family home with a yard. 

This creates strong demand for BTR housing, and Johnsen said he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. He said that is part of why PPR decided to focus on BTR with its new fund.

“Going forward, rents in build-to-rent properties — or properties that mimic single-family housing, whether it’s a townhome or detached single-family — are going to significantly outperform rents at your more traditional garden-style, podium-style multifamily property,” he said. 

“But right now, especially given some of the supply surges that have happened in these Sun Belt markets, that’s not really reflected in their valuations,” he added. “So we think there’s a great opportunity for our investors to get in with relatively low downside.”

Charlotte investors are bracing for potential changes to the build-to-rent space.

Charlotte has emerged as one of the strongest BTR markets in recent years, driven in part by population growth and rising housing costs. But some investors are pausing sales as a federal housing bill moves through Congress. The latest version of the bill retains protections for the BTR industry, but its fate remains uncertain.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Jason Esposito, CEO of South Carolina-based homebuilder Center Park Group, which specializes in BTR. “It’s got to go back to the Senate and pass.”

Esposito was speaking at Bisnow’s Multifamily Annual Conference on May 19 at The Union at Station West in Charlotte. Eric Speckman, co-founding principal of investment and development firm Beauxwright, noted a “lack of transaction volume” in the Charlotte BTR market as companies await the bill’s final passage.

“We’re seeing this in real time, particularly on build-to-rent,” Speckman said. “So it’ll be nice, once the legislation gets worked out, to remove some of this uncertainty that investors have.”

In March, major investors mostly stopped buying and financing BTR sites due to the uncertainty of the the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. “Now, it’s kind of a wait-and-see game,” Esposito said. “We have a lot of projects that are at the starting gate that are ready to go.”

On May 20, the House of Representatives passed an amended version of the housing bill that eliminated a controversial BTR provision. That provision, found in a previous Senate version, would have required BTR operators to sell properties after seven years of ownership. The latest bill heads back to the Senate, where a fresh showdown is expected.

Esposito said the provision, if restored, would “completely eliminate additional supply.”

Last year, demand for BTR residences was on the rise in the Queen City, according to the Charlotte Business Journal. As of mid-2025, the Charlotte metro area had more than 4,100 BTR single-family homes under construction, according to a 2025 report by interior building supplier Best Supply, and was ranked second in the space behind Phoenix. 

But the report noted that some national investors had been “slowing new acquisitions after years of aggressive expansion.”

Alex Barroso, executive vice president of Portman Residential, said at the event that BTR is currently facing a lack of tenant demand. 

“Charlotte’s seen a ton of build-to-rent, but some of those have been difficult to lease up,” Barroso said. “They’re a lot slower, which perhaps a lot of developers didn’t assume when they underwrote them.”

Though the space remains “viable,” he says “money is slowly moving away from it.”

But factors like high housing and land costs continued to draw developers to BTR opportunities in Charlotte last year to meet local demand. Among some of the notable deals was Progress Residential’s $27.3M purchase of BTR community Harmon Five Points in October. Barroso said that just a few years ago, BTR was “all everybody and anybody was looking to invest in” in Charlotte.

David Lee, director of land acquisition at JPI, added that “the reason we saw a lot of those deals” is because they are “easier to capitalize.”

Charlotte is still listed among the major markets where “employment diversity, household growth, and suburban expansion continue to support build-to-rent demand” in 2026, according to a recent report by Catalyst Capital Partners.

But the forecast is dependent on what happens with the housing bill. Esposito said investors will continue to pause operations until they see “closure and certainty on the bill.”

An Amtrak train in Los Angeles

Amtrak is on the verge of significant expansion to as many as 160 new communities thanks to the new trillion-dollar federal infrastructure bill.

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed late Friday by the House of Representatives, will deliver more than $100B in investment to passenger and freight rail, Construction Dive reported. Of that amount, $19.2B specifically will be earmarked for Amtrak investment, the American Public Transit Association said. 

By 2035, the nation’s passenger rail service could reach more cities with 30 new routes and establish more frequent service on at least 20 existing lines. Major projects include a new $11B Hudson River Tunnel between New Jersey and New York that could begin construction in 2025.

Amtrak over the summer projected a $117B price tag for massive expansion by 2035, including shoring up the important Northeast Corridor, which it said was overdue for renovation.

“The Northeast Corridor is such a massive part of the Northeast economy, and the Northeast economy is such a huge driver of the national economy,” Real Estate Board of New York Senior Vice President for Government Affairs Reggie Thomas told Bisnow earlier this year.

Plans to upgrade the 450-mile corridor from Washington, D.C., to Boston by 2035 could spur $195B in economic activity and support more than 26,000 permanent jobs, Amtrak’s study earlier this year found.

Amtrak could also introduce service between thriving Southeast metros like Atlanta to Charlotte and Atlanta to Nashville, as well as farther north between Cleveland and Detroit. The nation’s largest metro without Amtrak service, Columbus, Ohio, could also get service with a new Cincinnati-to-Columbus-to-Cleveland route. 

The routes would reach previously underserved communities, which could come alongside improved public transportation and transit-oriented development, William Murdock, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, told Construction Dive. 

The trillion-dollar infrastructure bill will also send $110B toward roads and bridges and $39B for public transit improvements. Biden said he would sign the bill once lawmakers return from a weeklong recess, Time reported.