Main Street Renewal, an arm of real estate investing firm Amherst Holdings, uses data-driven artificial intelligence to fuel its single-family rental business.
Fortune reports that Main Street Renewal owns or manages 16,000 single-family homes across the Midwest and the Sunbelt, and hopes to grow that portfolio to 1 million properties over the next 15 years. The investment reflects the emergence of a new class of single-family renters, driven by “tighter lending standards, large college-debt loads, and lagging wage growth and savings,” Fortune writes.
Amherst depends on humans to find cities, towns, and neighborhoods where fixer-uppers can become profitable, then relies on automation to pick individual homes. Negri, 31, heads the human team. He spends 150 days a year on the road overseeing Main Street Renewal’s operations from Atlanta to Denver, searching for “sweet spot” neighborhoods that combine affordable rents with a strong middle-income employment base.