Real estate asset manager and development firm GTIS Partners sold a 1,081-unit single-family rental portfolio of homes in Atlanta and Nashville, Tenn., for $300 million as it pivots to the burgeoning  build-to-rent market.

The portfolio’s buyer was not disclosed. The sale represents the New York-based firm’s almost complete exit of the single-family rental homes it purchased in the wake of the financial crisis, it said in a press release.

GTIS entered the market in 2012 when home values were still depressed. Since then, the firm has owned or managed more than 4,700 properties across nine markets. It has sold 2,630 properties over the last three-and-a-half years for $400 million and has another 376 homes in the retail disposition pipeline, it said.

GTIS is now developing purpose-built communities of single-family rental houses. The company has seven such projects underway in Phoenix and South and Central Florida, senior managing director Rob Vahradian said in the release.

“Our SFR investments have been strong performers to date and have generated attractive risk-adjusted returns for our investors,” GTIS President and CIO Tom Shapiro said. “This sale represents an important milestone for our firm as we exit the first phase of our SFR platform and shift our focus to providing new purpose-built rental product to a market that is in desperate need of new, high-quality supply.”