Large institutional investors are changing the realities of the U.S. rental housing market, but a lack of information makes it hard for cities to respond.
“Understanding who owns rental units is a first step toward ensuring a supply of affordable, quality rental stock—and to supporting landlords—but very little data on rental property ownership exist,” according to an article by Fay Walker and Eleanor Noble for the Urban Institute.
Walker and Noble help fill the gap, however, using publicly available data to examine rental property ownership and analyze ownership patterns in Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia to produce several key findings: small landlords own a shrinking share of the rental units in these cities, large institutional ownership makes it harder to discern who owns rental units, and more research is necessary to generate solutions that will benefit renters and landlords.
The last point is really the key call to action of this article: “As the landscape of landlords changes in cities nationwide, it will be increasingly important for municipalities to understand what tools they have to support small landlords and, by extension, their tenants.”
A lot more data on the housing markets of these three cities and the larger United States are included in the source article below.
FULL STORY: Ensuring Safe and Affordable Housing Stock Starts with Understanding Who Owns Rental Units
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University of Cincinnati Online
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Journal of the American Planning Association