If you are anything like us, you are probably confined to your home seeing constant headlines about COVID-19 and its effects on literally everything. Unemployment is rapidly rising. The stock market is volatile. Travel has stalled. Nobody knows when this is going to end. Maybe this summer, maybe next year.

As real estate investors, that means that we have to explore scenarios to see how our favorite real estate sector - single-family rentals (SFR) - will fare in this market environment. There’s a lot of factors at play, so by no means is this an article on what to do or what will likely happen. The purpose of this piece is mainly to touch upon what a SFR is and how the asset class might perform during a prolonged recessionary environment.

To start, let’s talk about what a SFR is.