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This new home community in Winchester is renting the American dream

March 28, 2026

Tricon Residential, officially opens their new neighborhood in Winchester on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. Built-to-rent homes are emerging in the region as institutional investors develop single-family neighborhoods intended for rental housing. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

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Everything from the Winchester home’s two-car garage, private backyard and newly finished construction appealed to Dijonet Martin, a paralegal, and Thomas McNeil, a construction worker, who were tired of navigating their native Orange County’s ever-steepening rental market.

When their 20-year-old son began school at an aeronautics program in the Inland Empire but still needed help with the rent, the couple looking for a change of pace thought, why not make a new family adventure of it?

“Would you rather move to a brand new, growing community, or do you want to move into a 50-year-old house where pipes are falling apart because of old plumbing?” Martin said.

As sweaty movers shuffled boxes into their contemporary stucco home’s cool air conditioning, Martin and McNeil became one of 60 new neighbors leasing single-family homes at Tricon Winchester’s growing built-to-rent community.

The investor-owned concept has come under fire from housing advocates and legislators who believe large, corporate homeowners are crimping opportunities for traditional homebuyers.

The community pool for the built-to-rent home by Tricon Residential in a new neighborhood in Winchester is seen on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

Build-to-rent a tiny slice of homebuilding

Tricon Residential, a division of the private equity giant Blackstone, has completed almost 200 built-to-rent homes in Winchester with more than another 100 on the way. The $180 million tract, which also will have 200 homes for sale, is the latest BTR community in Southern California.

The Winchester development in Riverside County marks Tricon’s eighth of its kind in the state and second in the Inland Empire, with another in Wildomar under a half-hour away. The builder’s Winchester homes — about 30 miles from Riverside and 70 miles from Irvine — sit among thousands of similar stucco homes near Diamond Valley Lake.

Tricon says its setting its sights on this development model nationwide.

“This land was set up very nicely for a residential neighborhood where we could provide sale housing, rental housing, plus the ability to deliver a school and a park all together,” said Andy Carmody, senior managing director at Tricon Residential. “This is an ideal scenario for us. We would do as many of these as we could across the country.”

The built-to-rent concept makes up only 1% of the overall stock of single-family homes nationwide and 1% to 2% of the overall rental market, according to UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. But any BTR expansion could be muted if new legislation in Washington is approved.

President Donald Trump has issued several executive orders to curb investor ownership of single family homes. The Senate-approved 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act similarly curbs institutional investors from owning single family homes, requiring those who own at least 350 rental homes sell them within seven years.

Tricon said their communities provide diverse kinds of housing at a time when the country faces a 4-5 million-unit deficit.

“We are in favor of building more homes of all types – for sale, for rent, apartments, condos, whatever is needed,” Carmody said. “We have to focus on putting more housing on the ground and making it available to their families in whatever form they want overall.”

Faced with a dearth of for-sale homes amid a nationwide housing slump, the National Association of Realtors supported the ROAD Act, saying the legislation would help put more homes into the market, helping to reduce the affordability crisis. “The median age of a first-time homebuyer has climbed to 40, a sign that today’s housing market is failing too many aspiring homeowners,” the trade association said in a statement after the bill passed.

Andrew Carmody, senior managing director at Tricon Residential, speaks during the opening ceremony of their new neighborhood in Winchester on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. Built-to-rent homes are emerging in the region as institutional investors develop single-family neighborhoods intended for rental housing. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

Rent vs. buy amid an affordability crisis

So why rent instead of buy?

With Riverside County home prices up 60% since 2019, 76% of homebuyers could not afford the median $595,000 home in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the California Association of Realtors. Steep down payments and high mortgage rates have kept many homebuyers out of the running.

Tricon pitches its rent as better than today’s mortgage. Its monthly rents range from $3,200 to $3,700 before fees but minus the extra costs of homeownership like property taxes, maintenance and Mello-Roos.

Also see: Southern California’s 59% jump in house payments chills homebuying

Carmody says Tricon’s BTR homes provide housing “that families want and need that is meaningfully more affordable today than the cost of ownership.”

Tricon is also offering its renters a $5,000 down payment incentive after five years of occupancy so they can buy a home.

Among the new Winchester residents is Brandon Ray, a 29-year-old firefighter with Cal-Fire in San Diego. He said he’d consider sticking around for the $5,000 should the timing prove convenient for his 4-year-old son, who could attend the nearby school opening this fall.

Ray is a landlord himself, renting out a single-family house he owns in his native Hemet. Property investors like Ray make up 10% of the investor market nationwide. In the Inland Empire, almost 2,000 homes are owned by small investors, according to data from Cotality.

“It’s a house,” Ray said of his newest home. “You don’t have to deal with wall-to-wall sounds like you would in an apartment, and you don’t have to deal with three stories like you would in a townhome.”

The two story homes range from three to four bedrooms with amenities like deep walk-in closets, spacious laundry rooms, staircase landing dens and double-vanity bathrooms. Outside, planted sweet briar flowers and sycamore trees line the streets, and a community pool sits nearby.

“We’re offering single-family living to families that need and want the space to live in, but either can’t or don’t want to or aren’t aren’t ready to buy a home of their own,” Carmody said.

An onlooker tours the bedrooms of a built-to-rent home by Tricon Residential in a new neighborhood in Winchester on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

This new home community in Winchester is renting the American dream Orange County Register

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This new home community in Winchester is renting the American dream

Build-to-rent a tiny slice of homebuilding

Rent vs. buy amid an affordability crisis

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