Shantanu Kamra

CEO at Kamra Holdings

Speaker

Shan Kamra is a full-time multifamily real estate investor and the founder of Kamra Holdings LLC, a Chicagoland firm that acquires, repositions, and operates middle-market apartment buildings across the city’s western suburbs.

Originally from Delhi, India, Shan built his first career in technology as an IT executive and project manager. He still credits that background for how he invests today — a working knowledge of big data helps him identify emerging submarkets early, and project-management discipline keeps renovations on schedule and on budget. He grew his portfolio past forty units while holding a demanding corporate job, then moved into real estate full time.

His focus is the middle market: buildings in the five-to-fifty-unit range that sit in an overlooked gap — too small to attract institutional capital, too operationally demanding for casual buyers. Often held for decades by mom-and-pop owners, they carry below-market rents and years of deferred maintenance. Shan’s work is to buy them carefully, renovate them properly, and create value through operations rather than waiting on the market.

He was named Investor of the Year by National RE Invest in 2020 and has been a featured guest on the Straight Up Chicago Investor podcast. He speaks regularly on how working professionals can build real estate income without becoming landlords.