American Homes 4 Rent files for up to $1.25 billion IPO

Real estate investment trust American Homes 4 Rent filed with regulators on Tuesday to raise up to $1.25 billion in an initial public offering of its Class A shares.

California-based American Homes 4 Rent started operations in November to continue the investment activities of AH LLC, which was founded by the company's chairman and founder Wayne Hughes. Hughes was also the founder and former chief executive of real estate investment trust Public Storage .

The filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price. (http://r.reuters.com/bef68t)

Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo Securities are among the lead bookrunners for the IPO.

American Homes 4 Rent owned 14,210 single-family properties as of April 30 and had an additional 1,425 properties in escrow that it expects to acquire, according to the IPO filing.

The company is among a host of landlords looking to buy foreclosed homes and rent them out to take advantage of rising rents in a recovering U.S. housing market.

Large institutional investors such as American Homes 4 Rent, private equity firm Blackstone Group and real estate firm Colony Capital will spend up to $10 billion over the next two years to buy distressed single family homes, housing analysts have estimated.

Colony Capital's Colony American Homes Inc is expected to price its IPO of up to $260 million on Tuesday evening, with trading beginning on Wednesday.

American Homes 4 Rent intends to list its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "AMH".

The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filing is a placeholder used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

(Reporting by Aman Shah in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)