Inside, there’s a living room painted crisp white, a kitchen with new-looking fixtures and two plain bedrooms upstairs.Just like the viewing, I could go through every other step—applying, paying a deposit, moving in and even living there a few years—without speaking to human being.Unlike most of the larger mass renters of single-family homes, they haven’t opened leasing offices in any of the cities where they operate—Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Minneapolis and St. Louis, according to The Automated Landlord, an expansive look at the role of technology in the Wall Street grab of houses, published in the February 2022 issue of the journal Environment and Planning.At a time when escalating home prices are pushing more people out of the prospect of ownership, landlord automation doesn’t just help wealthy investment firms own an increasing percentage of the U.S.’s small homes—it makes the whole paradigm possible.“Because of that, it was impossible to do things like securitization or real estate investment trusts”—the complex financial instruments that Wall Street uses to extract money from investments."