A message from our CEO
Using Scale and Commitment to Help Solve America’s Housing Crisis
Amherst is committed to addressing the ongoing housing crisis and supporting Americans and our communities by adding more homes to our nation’s housing supply. Through our for-rent and for-sale single-family homes, we provide critical housing with purpose and impact.
Over the past year, we’ve strengthened our teams, welcomed new leadership, and deepened our mission to reinforce our long-standing belief that access to quality, attainable housing is essential to building stronger foundations for American families and communities.
We made meaningful investments to scale our impact, support our communities, improve our resident experience, and expand our long-standing for-sale housing offering through our new Verse community in Lockhart, Texas. By leveraging our expertise, technology, and resources, we refined our strategies to meet the ever-changing needs of residents, communities, and investors.
As a housing provider and manager of long-term investments, we focus on improving the housing experience for our residents and supporting the broader needs of communities. By collaborating with our partners, we transform underserved areas of the housing market and create opportunities for greater stability, accessibility, and quality of life. All of us at Amherst are committed to advancing resilient housing solutions to confront the pressing challenges of affordability and availability.
This Impact Report highlights the progress we’ve made and the responsibility we carry as leaders in the housing industry. These achievements are the result of collaboration with our residents, communities, investors, employees, and stakeholders. Their support shapes our mission. We are energized by the opportunities ahead to build on our strong foundations and drive lasting change.
A Message from our Head of External Affairs and Social Impact
2024 served as an important reminder on the power of building strong foundations together.
Housing providers, policymakers, and consumers widely acknowledge that we must all work together to meaningfully improve housing accessibility for Americans. Adding new housing supply requires collaboration. By working hand-in-hand with our residents, vendors, investors, employees, and community partners, we saw this year more than ever how we can have an even greater impact.
We provided homes for our residents, who often experience obstacles to housing accessibility. We also expanded our core services and housing products to better meet the needs of American families that continue to face structural barriers in the housing market. We achieved these major accomplishments by:
We are incredibly proud of what we achieved in 2024. Throughout this report, we highlight how we have built on the foundation of our platform to make housing more accessible. We would like to extend a sincere thanks to our residents, vendors, employees, investors, and community partners for growing on this journey with us
Investing in our technology and processes to be more responsive to our residents and support small businesses: In 2024, we improved our resident operations and our processes with local vendor networks to better serve single-family renters and support local economies. We developed technology-enabled route mapping for our maintenance team to more efficiently respond to resident requests. We also launched our bespoke financial empowerment library with resources tailored to renting families that are looking to improve their financial literacy and move toward homeownership.
Engaging directly with policymakers to increase public-private sector collaboration: We continued to invest in our government relations function to more proactively engage with federal, state, and local policymakers. Through these conversations, we have heard firsthand the unique
housing needs of communities, and we tailored our services and offerings accordingly. We have also launched collaborations with public and non-profit partners that expand housing opportunities for families throughout America.
Finding innovative ways to create supply for first-time homebuyers: After years of working on product design, we launched our first-ever for-sale modular home community—called the Verse Community—in Lockhart, Texas, to augment our successful scattered site infill investments. Through our
StudioBuilt business, we optimize the cost and design advantages of industrialized construction to build more energy-efficient and sustainable homes
for families to purchase. This investment is in addition to our work preserving dilapidated houses to make them homes for our residents.
2024 Impact Highlights
Homes renovated in 2024
Invested in preserving single-family homes
Invested in local small business
vendors and materials costs
Residents Served
Homes Under Management
Invested in Home Preservation*
Amherst Team Members
*Data since inception.
School supplies provided for
Cap City Kids, including:
1,780+ Backpacks filled with back-to-school supplies to ensure students can excel at school
1,300+ Hygiene kits for children experiencing homelessness or housing transition
Hours in year-round counseling
services to at-risk youth
Raised for Cap City Kids
at annual fundraiser
Supporting Residents, Building Futures
CARES: Strengthening Our Residents’ Foundations
Empowering Communities Through CARES: A Model of Innovation and Strength
Launched in 2017, the CARES (Client Assessment Resources and Empowerment Services) program is a groundbreaking initiative designed to educate and empower residents, fostering housing stability through resource sharing, advocacy, and emotional support.
The CARES team is foundational for our residents. The team is made up of social workers and program specialists who provide a vital resource, offering guidance before residents face financial hardship. Residents concerned about housing or financial stability can rely on CARES specialists to connect them with essential resources, provide social-emotional support during challenging times, and offer personalized case management services to address current needs and plan for the future with confidence.
In moments of crisis, the CARES team ensures timely, effective support by connecting residents to local resources and working closely with property management teams to help residents regain stability and move forward.
The success of the CARES program lies in its commitment to personalized, consistent support. By meeting residents where they are and equipping them with tools for self- advocacy, CARES fosters resilience, promotes self-sufficiency, and empowers individuals to build brighter futures.
Through evidence-based approaches, CARES reduces housing challenges and default rates while strengthening social welfare and community ties. CARES serves as a model for how innovative programs can create meaningful, lasting change.
2024 CARES by the numbers
Total number of residents served*
*Includes roll-over residents from 2023
Of residents enrolled
successfully graduated from
their personal programs
Residents registered
for CARES case
management services
For every home we operate, we invest an average of over $30,000 in initial repairs. This represents more than 7x the amount the average homeowner can afford to spend on home repairs in their first year of ownership.
A Stronger Foundation for Sustainable Housing
While the United States’ shortage of housing is well-documented, the deterioration of the nation’s existing single-family housing stock is a critical piece to rightsizing the supply-demand imbalance driving today’s housing crisis. The average home in the U.S. is 45 years old and needs significant capital expenditures to make it habitable, safe, and energy efficient. This is simply a non-starter for the majority of homebuyers. Professional platforms like Amherst and Main Street Renewal have the necessary capital and economies of scale to rehabilitate homes that need too much work to be real options for most Americans to purchase.
Our Home Transformations
Renovation Cost: $90,000
Renovation Cost: $81,000
Renovation Cost: $83,000
Renovation Cost: $74,322+
Renovation Cost: $107,383
Fort Worth, TX
Renovation Cost: $90,000
Durham, NC
Renovation Cost: $81,000
Plano, TX
Renovation Cost: $83,000
Dallas, TX
Renovation Cost: $74,322+
Lakeland, FL
Renovation Cost: $107,383
Strengthening Communities with Innovative Housing
StudioBuilt by Amherst is an innovative modular home building solution that utilizes off-site construction to create new housing supply at scale. This studio- based construction process enables us to produce homes significantly faster than traditional on-site construction, provide better quality controls during the construction process, and offer an overall more sustainable housing product.
StudioBuilt homes meet the same building requirements as traditional site-built homes with an even more rigorous 140-point inspection process. By removing barriers like weather, trade delays, and supply chain issues, these homes can be built about 50% faster than traditional homes.
StudioBuilt homes are built using low-volatile organic compounds (VOC) materials and finishes, energy-efficient appliances, and low-voltage lighting and exhaust systems. We utilize highly efficient, precision-based equipment, such as our Hundegger machine to precision-cut lumber and significantly reduce waste to landfills.
The StudioBuilt sustainability difference:
- Energy-efficient and less expensive to heat and cool
- Resilient in the face of natural disasters
- Precision-built generating far less waste
- Environmentally-friendly with reduced carbon emissions
Building New Foundations and Growing Homeownership Opportunities: The Verse Community in Lockhart, Texas
This year, StudioBuilt announced Verse, our first for-sale community in Lockhart, Texas. Verse will have 145 homes available for sale; all built at our facility in Cuero.
The Verse Community will feature three- and four-bedroom homes, three unique floorplans, and ten different elevations. Residents can choose from various finishing packages to ensure that their home is tailored to their specific functional and design needs.
Building a Stronger Foundation through Community Engagement
Amherst was proud to partner with Habitat for Humanity of Key West and Lower Florida Keys to support its mission of providing safe, affordable housing. Through our donation, we helped provide new homes for deserving families. We deeply value Habitat for Humanity’s mission and efforts to create opportunities for housing stability and hope – while bringing people together to build homes, communities, and brighter futures.
Cap City Kids (The Capital City Fund for Education)
Cap City Kids (The Capital City Fund for Education) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that provides students who are at-risk or currently experiencing homelessness with the support and resources they need to attend and excel at school.
Cap City Kids was founded by Joslyn and Sean Dobson in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to fill urgent resource gaps for displaced children located in central Texas. Because Cap City Kids is a volunteer-based organization sponsored by Amherst Foundation, 100% of donations go directly to meet student needs.
Cap City Kids’ student-first approach meets every child where they are, investing in custom pathways for success in and out of the classroom. With a programmatic focus in three core areas—academic achievement, mental health, and family resources—Cap City Kids provides direct services and resources through local school district liaisons, social workers, and educators.
Today, Cap City Kids operates in 28 states and 30 cities, providing crucial support to vulnerable students facing homelessness.
Cap City Kids by the Numbers:
Hygiene kits for students experiencing homelessness or housing transition
Hours of counseling provided by social work interns to at-risk students
Backpack Build
A total of 148 UT interns have benefited from the program
