The Institutionalization of Landlording: Assessing Transformations in Property Ownership Since the Great Recession

Abstract

Are large and institutional landlords overtaking the rental market? Acquisitions by institutional landlords spark concern, but claims about the novelty of large owners are untested because no longitudinal studies of property ownership exist. This article undertakes the first complete, longitudinal study of rental ownership in any U.S. city, developing computational tools to track ownership in Austin, Texas since the Great Recession. I find that Austin landlords with more than 100 rental units have not increased their market share since 2010. Large landlords grew larger, but the number of amateur landlords owning only one rental property also increased by 41 percent, stabilizing small landlords’ market share. In addition, rental ownership is rapidly “formalizing” in Austin, indicated by a rise in organizationally complex and publicly obscuring ownership strategies across landlords. Instead of a rise in institutional landlords, these trends indicate landlording is becoming an institution: an enduringly popular and now depersonalized means of extracting rents from one’s neighbors. I propose that the institutionalization of landlording may best describe rental ownership dynamics in many cities.

Keywords: Landlords, Housing, Urban Inequality, Institutionalization