Both Front Yard Residential Corporation (NYSE:RESI) and Essex Property Trust Inc. (NYSE:ESS) are REIT – Residential companies, competing one another. We will compare their profitability, analyst recommendations, risk, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings and valuation.

Valuation and Earnings

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Front Yard Residential Corporation	156.74M	3.76	134.09M	-2.51	0.00
Essex Property Trust Inc.	1.47B	12.54	390.15M	5.67	46.35

Table 1 shows the top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation for Front Yard Residential Corporation and Essex Property Trust Inc.

Profitability

Table 2 shows the return on assets, return on equity and net margins of the two firms.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Front Yard Residential Corporation	-85.55%	-22.7%	-6.6%
Essex Property Trust Inc.	26.54%	5.9%	3%

Risk and Volatility

Front Yard Residential Corporation’s current beta is 1.51 and it happens to be 51.00% more volatile than Standard and Poor’s 500. Essex Property Trust Inc.’s 0.27 beta is the reason why it is 73.00% less volatile than Standard and Poor’s 500.

Dividends

Front Yard Residential Corporation shareholders receive an annual dividend of $0.6 per share which is subject to 5.51% dividend yield. Essex Property Trust Inc. offers an annual dividend of $7.44 per share, bundled with 2.75% dividend yield.

Analyst Recommendations

The Ratings and Recommendations for Front Yard Residential Corporation and Essex Property Trust Inc. are featured in the next table.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Front Yard Residential Corporation	0	0	2	3.00
Essex Property Trust Inc.	0	3	5	2.63

Front Yard Residential Corporation’s upside potential is 22.95% at a $13.5 consensus price target. Essex Property Trust Inc. on the other hand boasts of a $275 consensus price target and a 1.73% potential upside. The data provided earlier shows that Front Yard Residential Corporation appears more favorable than Essex Property Trust Inc., based on analyst view.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

Roughly 76.4% of Front Yard Residential Corporation shares are owned by institutional investors while 99.1% of Essex Property Trust Inc. are owned by institutional investors. About 1.2% of Front Yard Residential Corporation’s share are owned by insiders. Comparatively, Essex Property Trust Inc. has 0.1% of it’s share owned by insiders.

Performance

In this table we provide the Week, Month, Quarter, Half Year, Year and YTD Performance of both pretenders.

	Performance (W)	Performance (M)	Performance (Q)	Performance (HY)	Performance (Y)	Performance (YTD)
Front Yard Residential Corporation	6.66%	9.45%	-12.56%	-10.02%	-11.35%	-18.97%
Essex Property Trust Inc.	0.03%	2.98%	5.33%	9.75%	9.14%	8.8%

For the past year Front Yard Residential Corporation has -18.97% weaker performance while Essex Property Trust Inc. has 8.8% stronger performance.

Summary

On 12 of the 14 factors Essex Property Trust Inc. beats Front Yard Residential Corporation.

Front Yard is an industry leader in providing quality, affordable rental homes to America's families. Our homes offer exceptional value in a variety of suburban communities which have easy accessibility to metropolitan areas. Front Yard's tenants enjoy the space and comfort that is unique to single-family housing, at reasonable prices. Our mission is to provide our tenants with houses they are proud to call home. Additional information is available at www.frontyardresidential.com.

Essex Property Trust, Inc. operates as a self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust in the United States. It engages in the ownership, operation, management, acquisition, development, and redevelopment of apartment communities, as well as commercial properties. As of March 31, 2012, the company owned or had interests in 158 apartment communities; and 5 commercial buildings, as well as 5 development projects. Its communities are located in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties in southern California; and the San Francisco Bay area in northern California, as well as in the Seattle metropolitan area. The company has elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust. As a result, it would not be subject to corporate income tax on that portion of its net income that is distributed to shareholders. Essex Property Trust, Inc. was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.