Danny Katten

Managing Director at PIA Residential

Speaker

Danny Kattan has spent nearly 20 years turning blank canvases into real estate operating engines—while sharing with the industry the lessons he’s learned along the way.

He entered the workforce in the mid-to-late 1990s as an investment banker. During the startup boom of the 2000s, he co-launched ventures in internet media, telecom, and biotechnology. By the mid-2000s, he was structuring mortgages at Countrywide Financial, mastering the capital stack one loan at a time. When the global credit markets cracked open in 2008, Danny began advising investment funds on how to acquire and re-engineer pools of non-performing loans—skills that became rocket fuel for what came next.

That same year, he co-founded PIA Group USA, one of the country’s first vertically integrated, institutional-quality single-family rental (SFR) platforms. Over the next decade, Danny and his partners acquired, renovated, and managed 400 SFR homes and 400 small multifamily units, keeping construction, property management, and asset management all under one roof. After exiting that portfolio in 2018, PIA pivoted to workforce value-add multifamily, acquiring six institutional-grade communities across the Southeast and growing PIA Residential to more than 1,400 units and $400 million in assets under management.

As the platform grew, so did its capabilities. PIA Lending emerged as a hard money lending arm specializing in fix-and-flip and construction loans in South Florida and Georgia. PIA Capital soon followed—a mortgage advisory division focused on DSCR loans, second liens on investment properties, and development financing across the country.

In 2019, Danny founded Sell2Rent (S2R), the first tech-enabled sale-leaseback marketplace. At the heart of S2R is the patented Investor Search Algorithm, a proprietary data engine capable of matching homeowners with yield-seeking buyers across the country—unlocking trapped equity for sellers while providing tenant-in-place cash flow for investors.

Over the course of his career, Danny has helped raise over $500 million in debt and more than $200 million in equity. He is a Forbes-published author and a sought-after speaker at IMN, NHRC, and every major SFR, fix-and-flip, and wholesaling summit. His message is distilled into a simple creed: speed wins, data rules, execution is everything.

Yet his proudest titles remain husband and dad. Danny and his wife are raising three daughters who keep him grounded in what matters most—family dinners, homework debates, and the occasional kitchen dance-off. He brings the same energy and commitment to community service, serving on the Hallandale Planning & Zoning Board and several nonprofit boards focused on education and civic growth.

Danny holds a degree in Industrial Engineering, graduating cum laude from Northeastern University, and earned his MBA from The Wharton School, where he co-founded the Wharton International Network of Entrepreneurs. Even now, he approaches every meeting with the curiosity of a startup founder. Whether you're managing one rental or a thousand-door portfolio, Danny is the operator you study when you're ready to turn momentum into market share—and then into an unassailable moat.