LOS ANGELES—Tuesday's announncement that New York-basedalternative asset management firm Premium PointInvestments was making its first foray into the rental housing sector,via a majority stake in Atlanta-based Residential CapitalManagement, helps illustrate the continuing appeal thatsingle-family rentals hold for investors. And a new report fromCBRE Group, headquartered here, makes the pointthat the dynamics fueling the sector's growth will be with us forawhile yet.

“It has now been 10 years since thehomeownership rate peaked in the United States,” according to thereport, prepared by Gleb Nechayev, senior managingeconomist with CBRE Econometric Advisors. “Therate has dropped by more than 450 basis points since then, andrental demand has grown by more than 7.5 million households—morethan in any other decade over the past half century.”

The shift from hme ownership to rental, hewrites, “has been so dramatic and persistent that it increasinglylooks and feels more like a structural change than a prolongedcyclical one. While it can be debated how much further we might seethe rate drop, homeownership currently faces a number of headwindsthat make a shift back toward owning unlikely in the near term.”