“It was meant to be an offer I couldn’t refuse and I couldn’t,” Bone told Motherboard.

The City of Cincinnati has become so weary of institutional investors that it is now buying houses directly to thwart them.

American Homes 4 Rent did not respond to a request from Motherboard asking to speak to an employee about its use of technology.

A public relations representative for Invitation Homes said the company “enlisted local experts in each market, rolling out a ‘pod-based’ operations model that leveraged local teams paired with industry-leading technology” and always had “the goal of replicating the practice across multiple markets.” The representative would not elaborate on how the company uses its technology.

With some of these firms, automated and digitized processes perform the key functions of a landlord. Showings are done via self-guided tours. Passcodes replace keys. Applications, leases and payments are done through web portals. Repair requests are also put in an online queue, for in-house staffers (for the larger companies, like Invitation Homes) or outsourced to local contractors.

According to Fields’ research, some companies have taken a hands-on approach to tracking repairs, once again employing new technological fixes: geo-tracking workers as they move from job to job and requiring cell phone pics to confirm completed repairs.

Companies have also leaned on tenants to do their own repairs. Invitation Homes once posted how-to guides for small fixes, like replacing toilet flapper valves and replacing garage door lights.

Still, repairs cannot be entirely automated or tossed back on the tenant, and Wall Street landlords struggle with them. Neglected common home issues, like leaky pipes and short circuits, are often highlighted in journalistic exposes of the industry.

Osborne, the Imagine Homes renter near Cleveland, said he often waited longer than expected for simple repairs, like a broken door handle, and there was confusion over who was responsible for lawn care. “I think they relied a little too much on the electronic/remote aspect of everything, neglecting our needs,” he said.

The people working at these companies know the automation aspect is the crux of their business model, said Fields. She attended several investment forums and industry conferences for her research.

“Everywhere, people were kind of singing the praises of technology as the real linchpin in making this new single family rental asset class a reality,” she told Motherboard.

Fields concluded in her paper that “[n]ew information technologies” have “given rise to the ‘automated landlord’, whereby the management of tenants and properties is increasingly not only mediated, but governed, by smartphones, digital platforms, and apps, and the data and analytics these devices and infrastructures gather and enable.”

For people who live in these houses, always shoveling rent payments through a portal, who profits from that payment is a tricky question, one that might require a trip down a rabbit hole of investment and financing.

**

Imagine Homes, for example, has a relationship to Colchis Capital Management, although what it is isn’t exactly clear. Houses rented out by Imagine Homes are purchased through a handful of LLCs, and each is incorporated in a state where the company does business. On that paperwork—plus paperwork incorporating Imagine Homes itself—are the names of Colchis executives and addresses of the fund’s offices.

Colchis executives did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Founded in 2005, Colchis entered the real estate market during the Great Recession, using high-tech loan platforms to fill gaps left by banks retreating from the housing market, according to Reuters.

According to its website, Colchis “leverage[s] big data, analytics, technology and operational know-how to strategically invest” in several categories of real estate holdings.

This has meant putting money into all kinds of companies proposing tech shortcuts to real estate investment. Colchis recently invested in one firm that plans to utilize AI for mortgage lending decisions, another looking to use blockchain tech in real estate investment, and one with a program that it claims can replicate all the paperwork needed to create a real estate investment firm in an afternoon.

Most of these multistate companies renting out single-family houses are connected to one or more investor groups. Blackstone Inc., a $950 billion colossus of complex financial products, launched Invitation Homes. The Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-sponsored agency that handles its oil revenue, was a key early investor in American Homes 4 Rent.

Pension and retirement funds also get wrapped up in investments like this.

“I’m sure there are some wealthy individuals that are involved—like ultra-high-net worth-type individuals—but it’s a lot of those types of institutional accounts that are partnering with private equity firms,” explained Fields. “A pension fund will bring equity in the form of our retirement accounts, and with that equity, the private equity players can leverage debt from various financial institutions, and together with the equity and the debt, they can undertake acquisition of properties.”

Imagine Homes’ connection to a group whose exclusive interest is automating and simplifying real estate transactions implies an added emphasis in landlord robotization.

According to an SEC filing, one would need to invest $500,000 to join Colchis’ pooled investments, which amount to $975 million in total according to analytics platform Radient.

Landlords, by definition, almost always have more assets than their tenants. But the global investor class behind Colchis—which has offices in San Francisco and Incline Village, a resort town on Lake Tahoe—would probably have even less in common with Imagine Homes tenants, who rent 1,000-square-foot houses in economically-withered cities.

Last year, Kaylee, who is in her mid-20s, had to move to the Pittsburgh area fast because of a job relocation. She wanted to be in the city, but there weren’t many options that included a yard for her dogs. She found a three-bedroom Imagine Homes property on the real estate listings site Trulia. It was in a sleepy suburb. She counted its closeness to the highway as a consolation.

Rent was $1,590 a month. It was more house than she needed, but she took it and hoped to find a roommate. She asked to use a pseudonym because she still rents from Imagine Homes.

She does everything, from adjusting the thermostat to paying rent, on her phone. “I took to that really easily,” she said. “I am definitely a product of my generation.”

She never found that roommate and after a few months, she felt some incongruity between the price she was paying and the town where she was living, full of grandmas who spent afternoons on their porch and lifelong residents working blue-collar jobs.

“I find it difficult to believe normal people who live and work here would pay that amount,” she said.

Drawn by algorithms, large investors seek out the kinds of areas where Kaylee lives, according to McKay, of the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts.

“They want houses of about $100,000 to $200,000 in what would be considered lower- or moderate-income communities,” he said. “These are places where people have a consistent income but can have some more difficulties than other places in the country becoming homeowners because of credit problems or down payment problems and stuff like that.”

Kaylee decided not to renew the lease when Imagine Homes increased the rent by $110. She also began to feel some discomfort with the rising of home prices, which she blames on investors—like the ones she sends $1,590 a month through a web portal.

“I know what’s happening in the housing market and I hate it,” she said. “I don’t know what will be there when I look [to buy a] house.”