What a buy box is
A buy box is the written set of criteria a fund's acquisitions team is allowed to buy inside. Year built, size, beds and baths, price band, location, condition, yield. Anything outside the box gets no offer, however good the spread looks to you.
The box is set above the analyst you are talking to. They cannot bend it for a good story. That is why a clean 1962 ranch in Oak Cliff gets silence from a fund and a bidding war from rehabbers. Different buyer. Different box.
The desk's DFW screen right now
No fund publishes its box, and every desk moves its own quarterly. The ranges below are FundPlug's screen for Dallas–Fort Worth, built from what fund buyers have asked the desk for. The calculator runs the same numbers.
- Year built: 2000 or newer passes on the screen. 1985 to 1999 is a watch, looked at case by case, and anything built before 1985 fails. For scale, AMH's 3,573 DFW homes average about 22 years old, and Invitation Homes now buys almost only new construction.
- Beds and baths: three or more bedrooms and two or more baths passes. Three or more bedrooms with 1.5 baths is a watch, and two-bedroom or one-bath houses fail. For scale, Invitation Homes describes its own portfolio as three to four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and GAO found a median of three bedrooms for institutional-owned homes.
- Size: 1,250 to 3,000 square feet passes. A house just outside that range, down to 1,100 or up to 3,500 square feet, is a watch, and anything beyond that fails. Below the range the rent does not cover the turn cost; above it the rent-to-price ratio thins out. Invitation Homes' average is about 1,880 square feet; AMH's DFW average is 2,078.
- Price band: $180,000 to $450,000 is the band the calculator uses for a house outside the 99 mapped DFW submarkets, and each mapped submarket carries a local band. A price inside the band passes, and a price up to ten percent below or above the band is a watch. AMH's DFW sales in the first half of 2026 averaged $255,535.
- All-in cost to ARV: 88 percent or less passes, and up to 95 percent is a watch. All-in is your asking price plus repairs, and ARV is the after-repair value. Rental funds pay closer to retail than flippers, but they still need equity on day one.
- Repairs: $25,000 or less and 10 percent of ARV or less passes. Up to $45,000 and 15 percent of ARV is a watch, and anything heavier fails. Think paint, flooring, fixtures, a roof or an HVAC, not foundation, fire or a gut.
- Gross yield: 7.0 percent or better passes, 6.0 percent or better is a watch, and anything lower fails. It is annual market rent divided by all-in cost (price plus repairs). Funds talk in cap rates, not gross yield, so this is the desk's threshold. ATTOM put Tarrant County's potential gross rental yield at 7.3 percent in early 2026.
- HOA: $75 a month or less passes, up to $150 is a watch, and more fails. Dues come straight off net yield, and many funds also screen the HOA documents for rental caps.
- Flood: Zone X passes. Shaded X, or a zone nobody has checked, is a watch. Zones A and AE fail, because mandatory flood insurance kills the yield and nearly every SFR fund excludes special flood hazard areas.
- Type: single-family detached passes. Townhomes and duplexes are a watch. Condos and manufactured or mobile homes fail.
- Occupancy and pool: a house that is vacant at closing and has no pool passes. A tenant in place, an owner-occupied house or a pool is a watch, and occupancy nobody has confirmed fails.
- Water and sewer: city water and sewer passes, and a septic system or a well fails that check.
- Days to close: 14 days or more passes, and 7 days or more is a watch. Fund desks run inspection, title and committee, so a shorter close only works with a buyer already in the file.
- Fund demand in the submarket: a score of 60 or higher on the desk's simulated DFW index passes, 40 or higher is a watch, and anything lower fails. It is a simulated index, not MLS, deed or transaction data.
When the cost of capital rises, the yield floor rises with it and the price band tightens. When rents run, the band loosens. Ask the desk what this quarter's box is, or ask us.
What the public record says about fund buyers in 2026
The largest single-family rental owners are not buying DFW resale houses, and from January 7, 2027 federal law bars investors with 350 or more homes from buying them at all, outside exceptions such as build-to-rent. The box above describes the buyers who remain: rental operators under that line, build-to-rent desks and local landlords.
- Invitation Homes' 2025 annual report says its strategy primarily targets newly constructed homes through homebuilder relationships, with existing homes only in certain cases and the MLS on a more limited basis. In 2025 it bought 2,410 homes, almost all from builders, and sold 1,356. It bought 457 and sold 1,140 in the first half of 2026.
- AMH's 2026 guidance shows no wholly owned acquisitions against 1,300 to 1,500 built-for-rent deliveries from its own program, and it sold 1,318 existing homes in the first half of the year.
- The Government Accountability Office counted about 30,000 institutional-owned homes in DFW in 2024, about 9 percent of single-family rentals, and found those owners sold more than 4,000 Dallas homes from 2019 to 2024.
How the desk underwrites your file
Rent first. The desk pulls its own rent comp for the address, usually a conservative one. Then all-in cost: your asking price plus their repair estimate, not yours. Yield is rent times twelve divided by all-in. If it clears the floor and the house is inside the box, they check location: school district, crime index, distance to employment, and whether they already own on that street. Some want density. Some cap it.
Then title and occupancy. A tenant with a below-market lease and ten months left is a discount. A vacant house that can be turned in thirty days is a premium. A probate with no letters issued is a pass until the paper is fixed. The desk also looks for a conventional lot, clean title and no shared driveways. The calculator does not check those three.
Rehabbers use the 70 percent rule: ARV times 0.70 minus repairs is the maximum offer. Funds do not think that way. They think yield and replacement cost. A house can fail the 70 percent test and still clear a fund box, and the reverse happens every week. The calculator's fund ceiling, 92 percent of ARV less repairs, is the desk's illustrative number for that gap, not a figure any fund publishes.
Where wholesalers miss
The same five mistakes kill most of the files a fund desk passes on.
- Chasing ARV. A fund does not care about the flip ARV. It cares about rent and what it costs to get the house rent-ready.
- Sending a 1955 house in a 1955 neighborhood. Great flip. Not a fund buy.
- Guessing rent high. The desk uses its own number. The gap kills the yield and the offer with it.
- Hiding the HOA or the flood zone. Both surface at title, and the deal dies on day twenty instead of day one.
- Pricing to the retail comp. Funds pay closer to your number than a rehabber will on a house inside the box, but they still need the yield.
Check the box before you send
Our calculator runs the desk's screen against your numbers: year built, size, beds and baths, price, repairs, rent, HOA and flood zone. It tells you pass, watch or fail on each line and shows the yield. It is a screen, not an offer, and every desk's box is its own.
Use it to decide where the file goes. Inside the box, it goes to a fund desk. Outside it, it goes to rehabbers and landlords with a different package. Either way, the desk talks to the desk and your seller is never contacted.