The opening
NexMetro Communities opened Avilla Foothills, a 108-home build-to-rent community on a 9.3-acre site at 12350 N. Cotton Lane in Surprise, Arizona, the company's 25th such community in the Phoenix metro, according to trade coverage from Builder magazine and Yield Pro published June 17 and 18. The gated community offers one-, two- and three-bedroom single-level, mostly detached homes with private entrances, front porches and private backyards.
'For a growing number of residents, renting is not a compromise; it is a strategic lifestyle choice that offers flexibility, convenience, and access to a high-quality home environment without the burdens of ownership,' said Jared Geisler, NexMetro's regional managing director for Phoenix and Denver, in comments included in both accounts. Rents at Avilla Foothills were not disclosed in either report.
A steady drumbeat of Phoenix-market openings
Avilla Foothills followed NexMetro's 24th Phoenix-market community, the 229-unit Avilla Bella Camino in San Tan Valley, which opened in May 2026, according to a company media log reviewed by Estate Wire. The company's 26th Phoenix community, the 214-unit Avilla Marigold in Buckeye, opened in August, and NexMetro also opened its first Atlanta-market community, Avilla Holloway in Stockbridge, in July — its initial expansion beyond the Phoenix and Denver markets where it has concentrated construction.
That cadence — roughly a new community every one to two months in a single metro — reflects how build-to-rent has scaled as an institutional product category in the Phoenix area specifically, where NexMetro has operated since 2010 under its Avilla Homes brand.
The broader build-to-rent context
Census Bureau data on single-family built-for-rent housing has shown national completions rising over the past several years as institutional capital increasingly finances purpose-built rental subdivisions rather than relying solely on scattered-site acquisition of existing homes — a structural shift from the post-2010 single-family rental model, which bought existing owner-occupied houses in bulk rather than adding new supply.
Phoenix has been one of the most active build-to-rent markets nationally in that period, driven in part by land availability at the metro's edges and by home-price appreciation that pushed traditional ownership further out of reach for many households, increasing demand for a rental product that offers house-like space and privacy without a mortgage. NexMetro's pace of openings in Surprise, San Tan Valley and Buckeye — all outer-ring Phoenix suburbs — tracks that broader pattern of build-to-rent construction concentrating on lower-cost land at the metro periphery rather than in the urban core.
The national numbers behind the trend
Census Bureau data on single-family homes built for rent — a narrower measure than the broader single-family-rental sector, since it counts only new construction purpose-built as rental housing, not existing owner-occupied homes converted to rentals — show 63,000 such units started nationally in the four quarters ending in the second quarter of 2026, according to an analysis of that Census series by Arbor Realty Trust and Chandan Economics. Those built-for-rent starts represented 6.9% of all single-family housing starts over that period, a share the analysis called significantly above historical norms even though it marked a decline from the sector's peak.
The National Association of Home Builders' own analysis of the same Census Quarterly Starts and Completions by Purpose and Design series found that single-family built-for-rent starts had fallen 16% from the prior four-quarter period's 75,000 units, with second-quarter 2026 starts alone down to roughly 15,000 units from 18,000 a year earlier — evidence, NAHB's Robert Dietz wrote, of a pipeline still normalizing after peaking at an all-time high of 92,000 annualized starts in the third quarter of 2024. Even after that decline, NAHB noted the four-quarter moving average build-to-rent share of just under 7% remained well above the format's historical average of 2.7% measured from 1992 to 2012, underscoring how much more institutionalized the product has become since the early 2010s.
That national deceleration provides useful context for NexMetro's continued Phoenix expansion: the company's steady openings through mid-2026 occurred even as the broader national build-to-rent pipeline was contracting, suggesting Phoenix-specific demand and land economics have so far cushioned NexMetro's core market from the industry-wide slowdown that Census data shows elsewhere.