U.S. property owners with just one rental house can now get cash from Wall Street to buy more.

Cerberus Capital Management, which initially targeted landlords with multimillion-dollar loans, is financing low-volume deals for small investors through its FirstKey Lending, with looser terms than government-backed mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said Randy Reiff, the business’s chief executive officer. Blackstone Group’s rental lending arm, B2R Finance, is making a similar push to mom-and-pop landlords.

“Our premise has always been to be able to lend to the middle market and entrepreneurial borrowers in the space, not just the institutional borrowers,” Reiff said. “The biggest guys have always enjoyed access to capital. The largest part of this market is really the entrepreneurial owners.”

The companies are competing to lend to owners of the almost 14 million rental houses in the United States at a time when many Americans are struggling to get a mortgage and homeownership is declining. Cerberus and Blackstone, along with Colony Capital, also are racing to package debt on homes managed by separate landlords for the first multiborrower bond sale.

Blackstone has led Wall Street’s issuance of $3 billion of securities backed by properties owned by one company. The New York-based firm’s B2R unit is expanding the rental bet with plans to offer funding to investors who need only one rental home to qualify, starting this year, said John Beacham, president of B2R.

About 53 percent of the 14 million U.S. investor-owned or vacation houses were without a mortgage as of last month, based on data from property-research firm RealtyTrac.

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