Today, private rental markets are pivotal to understanding housing and cities. Yet, private renting remains ill-understood because good data about renting is lacking. My work addresses this gap in two ways: (1) by developing innovative data strategies and (2) by studying the housing choices, outcomes, and experiences of private renters at the margins. Combining big data with ethnographic groundtruthing, I develop mixed-methods research designs that offer a more holistic understanding of evolving housing needs while amplifying the voices of marginalized groups who are often not captured well in traditional data. Both in my work in Canada and in Asia I often focus on renters who are also (im)migrants.