April 1, 2026
To our Partners,
Today, we see a true inflection point, both for rental housing markets and for what separates strong managers from exceptional ones in this environment. The tailwinds that defined the last cycle have given way to something more demanding and, frankly, more rewarding for those who are prepared. This is a period that will be won through disciplined execution, not financial engineering or cap rate compression. We believe the managers that will outperform in this cycle are those that not only have superior access to real-time market data and intelligence, but also effectively harness it — translating insight into AI-supported operational execution at scale. Our hope is this letter provides insights into our perspective on the market opportunity, the investments we have made in our platform, and why we believe Greystar is well-positioned to deliver differentiated outcomes for our partners in the years ahead. Greystar was built with a clear and consistent identity: we are a vertically integrated operator, investor, and developer dedicated to rental housing for institutional partners. We have stayed anchored to that focus for more than three decades while the sector itself has evolved. What was once a multifamily industry dominated by fragmented, local “mom-and-pop” service providers has expanded into what is now broadly understood as the global Living Sector. Today, we are the most scaled platform specialist in our industry.
With a platform spanning over one million units in 18 countries, Greystar has a proprietary, real-time view into operating fundamentals that most market participants simply do not have — and that data edge is the single most important advantage in timing and selecting opportunities in a market like this. In uneven recoveries, the winners are those already positioned where the data is turning before the broader market re-rates assets. We see that window open right now. We have been deliberate about building a differentiated platform that can operate, invest, and develop at institutional scale across markets and product types within living across the world’s great cities. We are proud of what our focus has built: what we believe is the only truly global, vertically integrated living-sector specialist at scale. Greystar is designed not just to participate in the market, but to define and shape outcomes through our platform, scale, market
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intelligence, and ability to execute. A recent testament to this belief was Private Equity Real Estate (PERE) naming Greystar as the Global Residential Investor of the Year for 2025, which marks the fifth time in the past eight years we have received this industry recognition. This identity matters more than ever today because we believe we are entering a period of performance dispersion, where the spread between mediocre and great outcomes widens in a meaningful way. In a dispersion environment, “market exposure” and “financial engineering” will not be the primary determinant of results. Market narratives still matter — rates, supply, demand, capital flows – but they are no longer sufficient to create differentiated outcomes. In every cycle, there are plenty of ways to create the appearance of performance — timing, leverage, financial engineering, or riding a favorable interest rate cycle. But enduring success in real assets is built differently. It is built through disciplined execution, research and data-driven strategy, sourcing the best opportunities in the best markets, and a relentless focus on asset-level value creation. This is especially true in a market where outcomes are increasingly determined by operator capability, not market beta. What separates the real winners is the ability to read inflections early, make decisions quickly as the facts change, and deliver operating performance consistently across markets and strategies. Put simply: in this cycle, execution drives returns.
Where We See Opportunity Today
Stepping back, the global rental housing thesis remains intact, and we believe the most difficult part of this cycle is behind us. Demand in the world’s great cities remains durable, supply is structurally constrained across many gateway markets, and homeownership affordability has been materially eroded. The rent-versus-own cost gap remains near a 25-year high in favor of renting, keeping more households renting for longer and driving move-outs to homeownership to historic lows across our portfolios. We do not see this dynamic reversing any time soon, resulting in strong retention and absorption across all rental product types. And as markets move toward a more normal operating environment, outcomes are no longer driven by broad market forces but by differences across geography, asset quality, and operator capability. In the U.S., peak deliveries are behind us, and uneven recoveries are creating opportunity for disciplined market selection. We are seeing acquisition opportunities in markets already in recovery where positive leverage exists, where our basis is below replacement costs, and where “zombie” owners have left material asset repositioning potential. These are the tell-tale factors for successful value-add investments. Additionally, development economics have turned where we expect suburban, garden-style product priced for the middle market to produce healthy and appropriate risk-adjusted returns.
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In Europe and Japan, chronic undersupply and urbanization continue to support strong long-term fundamentals in housing. With inflation stabilizing, accretive debt available, and a dearth of other sophisticated operators, the opportunity is ripe for both acquisitions and development. It is also worth noting that global policy and regulatory conditions remain top of mind for investors, particularly as housing affordability, capital flows, and geopolitical considerations continue to evolve unevenly across regions. While policy uncertainty can create near-term friction, it also reinforces the value of scale, local expertise, and diversification. Our platform is built to navigate highly localized regulatory environments, maintain constructive government and community relationships, and allocate capital across geographies and living sectors where supply constraints and policy outcomes are most supportive. This breadth differentiates us from single market or single product specialists and allows us to manage risk while remaining positioned to capture long-term structural demand across global living assets.
Investing in our Highest-Conviction Strategies Today
Not all conviction looks the same. Some opportunities are compelling because the fundamentals have been building for years; others because the market has mispriced a transition that is already underway. We are often asked where we have the most conviction today, and the honest answer is that it’s less about finding new themes and more about following existing ones to their full potential. For Greystar, this means focusing on Europe, Japan, and the U.S. — let’s take a closer look at all three:
Europe
Last year, we shared that European Rental Housing was our highest-conviction strategy. This view has been strongly validated since, as Europe continues to demonstrate resilient fundamentals and stable valuations in the residential sector, amid broader market adjustments. Structural undersupply, persistent urban demand, affordability challenges driving rental preference over ownership, and supportive dynamics such as stable or growing rents have positioned the sector as a reliable source of income and long-term value. Our successful deployment across major metropoles such as Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam — and others — has capitalized on this conviction, generating consistent performance through high-quality, well- located assets that benefit from tight rental markets and tenant demand. A successful disposition strategy is also underway for our first pan-European fund, underpinned by our strong regional platform and disciplined approach to the full asset lifecycle in Europe.
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Japan
Japan is one of the world's largest rental markets, with Tokyo and Osaka among the most significant renter populations globally, underpinned by sustained urbanization and structural household formation trends that we expect to persist. The asset class has demonstrated remarkable resilience, delivering stable cash flows and high occupancy through multiple cycles, including the pandemic, supported by a lease culture that inherently protects landlord interests.
While the Bank of Japan's rate normalization has drawn attention, cap rate spreads over government bonds remain compelling, inflation is driving long-hoped rent growth, and financing conditions remain broadly supportive, though realizing that opportunity requires genuine local presence and deep market relationships. We see a meaningful value-add runway through our sourcing relationships, under-rented assets and development, with deal structuring available to manage risk.
The U.S.
The U.S. rental housing market is in recovery mode, which triggers our conviction in the upcoming opportunity, on par with where we stood on Europe in 2024 and 2025. Fundamentals are beginning to stabilize, though the path forward remains uneven across markets. That unevenness matters. At this point in the cycle, outcomes are driven less by broad exposure and more by market selection, basis, and execution. Capital positioned where fundamentals are improving, at pricing that still reflects last year's headlines, is better situated to deliver durable NOI and value growth. A few principles guide our approach today:
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The recovery should be evaluated by each market’s opportunity set, not through a single national narrative — and when you do, the picture is compelling. Across the U.S., we see three distinct
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groups of markets: those already generating real operating tailwinds, markets approaching a near-term inflection point, and markets still working through elevated supply that will take longer to normalize. Critically, all three categories present actionable investment opportunities today. The U.S. has never been one market, and the current environment is creating exactly the kind of dislocation we look for — where pricing has not yet caught up with improving fundamentals, and where disciplined execution can convert early signals into outsized results. • Peak supply is behind us and record low supply is in front of us. As a result, the risk is not being early but instead, the risk is waiting. Supply cycles do not resolve quietly. Recoveries begin before consensus and can accelerate faster than expected once deliveries slow and demand remains durable. When supply normalizes, leasing momentum and rent growth can inflect quickly, particularly in markets where employment growth and in-migration never meaningfully declined. By the time the national trend turns decisively positive, basis resets have occurred, mispricings have narrowed, and the earliest NOI inflections are already behind you.
• A wave of debt maturities adds a layer of opportunity. Nearly $800 billion of multifamily assets were acquired between 2020 and 2022. A wave of debt maturities is upon us. Many of the buyers who drove peak pricing last cycle, including public and non-traded REITs, are forced net sellers today. That creates acquisition opportunity to underwrite volumes of deals and to select the very best. Greystar is built for exactly this moment.
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Reinvesting in our Platform
At times of market stress, it is also the moment when your partner’s viability and durability really matters. Many firms, particularly subscale platforms, will face difficult decisions as the combination of elevated operating costs and low growth will put pressure on platform investments and team member retention. In that environment, the strength of the organization behind the assets becomes a critical variable. • We’re building trailblazing market and property intelligence. Few advantages in asset management compound the way data does. But only if you have enough of it, and only if you can act on it. The data we shared earlier that our platform generates – information from more than 1.1 million managed units, 2+ million residents, and guided by the daily interactions of 29,000+ team members over three decades – results in a dataset that no subscale operator can replicate…and one we are determined to put to work. That starts with GPS, the Greystar Performance System. GPS is a single, real-time source of truth that replaces the disconnected spreadsheets and last-generation dashboards that once defined the industry. Every analyst, asset manager, and senior leader operates from the same view, which means when markets shift, we move. Strategy, marketing, renovation pacing, expense controls, capital allocation: GPS touches all of it, in real time, at scale. At our Annual Summit, we intend to show this to you live. Because in a dispersion market, proof of differentiation matters as much as thesis. • What GPS enables, AI is beginning to accelerate. We are deploying machine learning against this proprietary dataset to detect market inflections earlier, anticipate resident behavior, and surface underwriting signals that are simply invisible to less-scaled operators. This is not data for its own sake — it is artificial intelligence in service of better investment decisions, tighter asset management, and the day-to-day operating choices that, over time, we believe will compound into differentiated returns.
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• We have a fortress balance sheet. Greystar’s strong balance sheet, long-term mind-set, industry-leading scale, and operating infrastructure are designed to be resilient through cycles. We do not retreat during down cycles — we invest in our people, platform, and portfolios precisely when others are forced into retrenchment. • We’ve made improvements that drive defined outcomes. We have been intentional about what we often describe internally as “working on ourselves.” Rather than treating the transition into a new cycle as a period to simply wait out uncertainty, we used it to strengthen our entire platform. We have focused on sharpening accountability, tightening performance feedback loops, and building a more repeatable system for converting insight into action at the property level. We believe the next cycle will reward organizations that can execute faster and with greater precision, and we have invested accordingly.
Thank you
We are grateful for the trust and continued support of our partners. Your long-term commitment to us — across strategies and through different market environments — remains the foundation of everything we are building together. As we look ahead to what we believe is a compelling period of opportunity across the Living Sector, we are encouraged by the strength of our shared conviction and the depth of the platform we have developed together.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support of Greystar.
Sincerely,
Bob Faith
Wes Fuller
Derek Ramsey
Founder, Chairman, and CEO
Chief Investment Officer
Chief Financial Officer
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*Reflects units and residents under property management. Team members include investment, development, construction, and property management. AUM reflects RIA regulatory AUM (approx.$36.5 billion as of December 31, 2025), and real estate investments organized by affiliates of Greystar Real Estate Partners (“GREP”), and real estate projects where affiliates of GREP are the primary developer, manager or operator.
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