Investment firm Blackstone Group acquired 17,000 single-family rental homes on Tuesday in a deal worth $6 billion. Blackstone, an asset management firm that focuses on alternative investments, acquired Home Partners of America (HPA) along with its 17,000 home inventory, the firm announced in a statement Tuesday. Blackstone will continue HPA’s business model of offering its tenants rent-to-own lease agreements, which allow the tenant to purchase the rental property after a certain amount of time. “The fundamental premise of the HPA platform is to provide residents with the opportunity to live in their chosen home with the option to purchase it,” Blackstone’s Real Estate Senior Managing Director Jacob Werner said in the statement. “We intend to build on that goal and expand access to homes across the U.S.” Blackstone had previously ventured into single-family rentals after the 2008 housing crash, at one point owning tens of thousands of homes before exiting …