When Fort Lauderdale broker Rick Tobin started selling apartment buildings as an offshoot of his hotel trades two years ago, he noticed new niche investors discreetly scooping up real estate across South Florida neighborhoods.

“This was a different breed of buyer than the typical buyer of apartment properties,” he said. “They weren’t asking about cap rates, and they weren’t asking about rents because they weren’t going to keep the tenants in there long.”