(Bloomberg) -- BGO, a real estate manager majority owned by Sun Life Financial Inc., committed $500 million to an effort to buy communities of single-family rental homes directly from builders.

The Miami-based firm is partnering with 1Sharpe Capital, co-founded by real estate veterans Gregor Watson and Rob Bloemker, to purchase groups of houses from builders, a strategy that’s seen as easier to manage than one-off acquisitions of scattered properties. For now, BGO and 1Sharpe are buying homes without debt, Watson said in an interview.

Single-family landlords have sought out deals with builders as higher interest rates and a lack of inventory make it challenging to buy properties from individual owners. The BGO and 1Sharpe partnership recently closed on its first deal, a 64-home community in the Phoenix metro area. 

“There’s a dearth of housing in the US,” said Chris Niehaus, managing partner at BGO. “Addressing that and helping to finance new product is a very attractive investment.”

Pretium, the largest single-family rental owner in the US, has raised nearly $1 billion for a new fund to acquire rental homes from builders, Bloomberg has reported. In another recent move, Fundrise lined up a $770 million credit facility from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to buy build-to-rent homes. Fundrise plans to use the funds to acquire about 4,000 units across the US Sun Belt, according to a statement.

Not all investors are bullish about opportunities to buy homes from builders. In a conference call last month, AMH Chief Executive Officer David Singelyn said that builders show his company thousands of available homes every quarter.

But for the most part, builders are asking high prices that are “just not an attractive opportunity,” he said. 

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