GAO reported that there were 450,000 single-family rental homes owned by institutional investors as of 2022. However, in a report by the Urban Institute, they estimated that large institutional investors owned 574,000 single-family homes as of June 2022 and their report was also based on 32 institutional investors. But, the Urban Institute actually aggregated data on all legal entities of the parent company because these institutional owners often use other names as the owner. They based their report on large investors owning a minimum of 100 single-family homes and they pulled data from a national property records database. The 574,000 figure is likely more accurate than GAO’s and the difference is most likely due to aggregating all of the legal entities under the parent companies.
One example to show how this could impact an area would be what’s taken place in metro Atlanta. Almost 11% of the single-family rental market (over 19,000 homes) in metro Atlanta are homes that belong to Invitation Homes, Pretium Partners and Amherst Holdings. According to GSU professor Taylor Shelton and Rutgers professor Eric Seymour, all three of these companies used an “extensive network of more than 190 corporate aliases registered to 74 different addresses across ten states and one territory.” They point out that by anonymizing themselves it could protect them from legal liability or tenant accountability. One could also argue that it may sway people’s decision to rent a home from them if they assume they are renting from a small scale company as opposed to a mega investor.
