California real estate startup Mynd expands to Jacksonville

The new technology platform is looking to help investors purchase and manage Jacksonville homes remotely. 

A real estate startup aims to have more than 1,000 Jacksonville homes in its portfolio in the next 12 to 18 months.

Mynd is a technology platform with the goal of simplifying the process of buying and managing single-family rental homes. Mynd CEO Doug Brien told the Business Journal he is in the process of launching in Jacksonville. Mynd's platform aims to let investors buy a property and manage it even if they don't physically live in that market.

"With what's happening in Jacksonville, there's demand to rent homes, and our investors want to have a presence there," Brien said. "We have conviction that it's a good market where we want to be long term."

In fall 2021, Mynd raised more than $57 million and announced it would look to continue expanding into new markets. Brien said Mynd built technology that is specifically geared toward single-family rental investment, rather than multifamily technology that often doesn't translate well to SFR.

Brien said Mynd could work with between 1,000 and 1,500 homes in Jacksonville over the next year or so. He said that will likely look like a combination of investors using the platform to buy homes and also working with existing investor-owners here that want to use the Mynd platform.

"Our mission as a company is to democratize access to happy homes and sustainable investments," Brien said. "So we're looking to balance the relationship between an investor and resident. Our goal as a company is to, at scale, make this industry work better by providing more transparency and better service so that landlords or investors understand the benefits of taking good care of their homes and their residents so that they have a happy home."

The startup will likely have a few employees in Jacksonville to start out, Brien said, as the platform gets established on the First Coast.