80% of single-family rentals are mom-and-pop; mega-landlords own just 3%. But mega-landlords dominate multifamily rentals.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
There has been a lot of talk about corporate mega-landlords buying up single-family houses one by one in massive numbers, outbidding overwhelmed homebuyers at every twist and turn.
But that’s just not the case. The landlords that own 80% of the single-family rental houses are mom-and-pop investors.
So we look at some basic data on who owns the single-family rental houses and the multifamily rental apartments.
While at it, we’ll look at the largest single-family landlords and multifamily landlords; and how PE firm and asset manager Blackstone is trying to fit back in, after it had exited the business.
Who owns the single-family rental houses in the US:
There are 146 million housing units in the US:
91% (132 million) are occupied
9% (14 million) are vacant.
Of the 14 million vacant housing units:
56% (8 million) are single-family houses, attached and detached.
34% (5 million) are apartments
10% (1 million) are mobile homes, boats, etc.
Of the 132 million occupied housing units:
66% (87 million) are occupied by owners (single-family houses, condos, co-ops, townhouses)
34% (45 million) are owned by landlords and occupied by renters.
Of the 45 million rented housing units:
65% (29 million) are apartments in multifamily buildings.
31% (14 million) are single-family houses, attached and detached.
4% (2 million) are mobile homes, boats, etc.
Of the 14 million single-family rentals (attached and detached houses):
80% (11.2 million houses) are owned by mom-and-pop landlords with 1-9 rentals
14% (1.96 million houses) are owned by landlords with 10-99 units
3% are owned by landlords with 100-999 units
3% (around 400,000 houses) are owned by a handful of huge landlords with 1,000+ units each.
The data for the above comes from John Burns Research & Consulting, based on its aggregation of public records data and Census Bureau data.
The largest single-family rental landlords in the US:
Progress Residential (about 85,000 houses), a privately-held company.
Invitation Homes (about 80,000 houses), a publicly traded REIT [INVH]. The company was formed by Blackstone during the Housing Bust in 2012 and later spun off to the public. Blackstone sold is last shares in 2019.
American Homes 4 Rent (about 60,000 houses), a publicly traded REIT [AMH]. The company was founded during the Housing Bust in 2012, and was spun off via IPO in 2013. In 2016, it merged with American Residential Properties. At the time, AMH owned 39,000 houses, and American Residential owned 9,000. Combined, it became the largest landlord at the time.
FirstKey Homes (about 50,000 houses), privately-held company.
Blackstone got back into single-family rentals by acquiring other big landlords. In 2021, it acquired Home Partners of America with 17,000 rental houses. In January 2024, Blackstone announced it would acquire Tricon Residential, a publicly traded Canadian company [TCN], with about 38,000 houses in the US and multifamily apartments in Canada. When the Tricon deal closes, Blackstone will once again be one of the biggest single-family rental players. Blackstone is not acquiring individual houses.
These five companies combined own about 330,000 single-family rentals, or about 2.4% of all single-family rentals, and about 0.3% of the 95 million single-family houses in the US (occupied and unoccupied, attached and detached).
The largest multifamily rental landlords in the US.
There are 34 million rental apartments in the US, of which about 29 million are occupied. The larger properties are mostly owned by larger landlords, given the size of the investment. And there are many very large multifamily landlords.
Blackstone announced last week that it would acquire a publicly traded multifamily REIT, Apartment Income REIT, or Air Communities, which owns about 22,000 apartments, for $10 billion. But even with this big $10-billion acquisition, Blackstone will be just a small-ish player among the giants.
The largest players in the apartment rental business (data via the NMHC):
MAA (100,000 apartments)
Greystar Real Estate Partners (100,000 apartments)
Morgan Properties (94,000 apartments)
AvalonBay Communities (80,000 apartments)
Equity Residential (80,000 apartments)
Cortland (77,000 apartments)
Nuveen Real Estate (about 73,000 apartments)
Monarch Investment & Management Group (67,000 apartments)
The Related Companies (71,000 apartments)
Edward Rose Building Enterprise (70,000 apartments).
Etc. etc.
The #50 on this list, Northland, owns about 27,000 apartments. Apartment Income REIT, which Blackstone is acquiring, with its 22,000 owned apartments, is not among the top 50.
The top 50 companies combined own 2.4 million apartments, or about 48,500 apartments per company on average each. The top 50 combined own about 7.1% of all rental apartments.
And who is on the hook for multifamily CRE mortgages? #1 Taxpayers, far ahead of #2 Banks!
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