Today's guest on Let's Talk ETFs is the Founder, President and Director of Research & ETFs at Hoya Capital Real Estate, Alex Pettee. Hoya Capital Real Estate is a Connecticut-based registered investment advisor that is working to make real estate investing more accessible to all investors. In that vein, Hoya Capital advises ETFs and individual accounts by investing in portfolios of publicly traded commercial and residential real estate companies.
Alex also goes by the moniker Hoya Capital Real Estate here at Seeking Alpha. He’s been a contributing author since 2015 - around the time he founded Hoya Capital - building up a following of more than 12,000 investors with his unparalleled analysis of the U.S. real estate market. Last month, he joined the team at the iREIT on Alphamarketplace service, run by Brad Thomas, to provide the macro side of the real estate investing equation.
In March of this year, Alex launched the Hoya Capital Housing ETF (HOMZ), which is really the first fund to offer exposure to the entire U.S. housing market in a single fund. Going beyond the homebuilders and mortgage REITs that are included in many housing ETFs, HOMZ includes the entirety of industries related to housing including home improvement and furnishing names, mortgage lenders, financing and technology companies in the portfolio, which tracks the Hoya Capital 100.
During a wide-ranging conversation, we cover the U.S. housing market from both a top-down and bottom-up perspective.
Topics covered:

3:00- Hoya Capital’s Backstory: How’d Alex become “obsessed” with real estate as an asset class and come to launch the Hoya Capital Housing ETF (HOMZ)5:45 - A year of firsts: Alex joins the the iREIT on Alpha Seeking Alpha Marketplace service as the “Macro real estate” specialist10:20 - Lower rates vs. recession concerns: Which trend has the upper hand in the U.S. housing market?18:15- When will the backlog of “deferred household formations” among Gens X and Y finally enter the housing market?22:15 - Viewing current homebuilder valuations in light of the massive run-up YTD (XHB) (ITB)24:40- Current dynamics in the rental market (REZ)29:55- HOMZ - The entire U.S. housing market in a single ETF33:00- Looking under the hood: Understanding sector caps and weighting’s within HOMZ37:30 - HOMZ: More of a capital appreciation or an income play?40:40 - Creating an ex-U.S. equivalent to HOMZ is harder than it seems43:45- In search of a higher quality higher yield real estate product45:45 - Maintaining a fair playing field in the ETF space
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