Here is a chart from a recent Bloomberg article summarizing who owns single-family houses in the US.
As of Q1-2024, about 69% were owner-occupied, about 26.6% were owned by small landlords (1-9 homes), and the rest were owned by what many are now calling "corporate landlords."
The point of this graph was to show that, despite getting a lot of political attention, corporate landlords still own very little. Let's call it sub 4%, excluding iBuying companies like OpenDoor. So how much of a problem is this, really?
Smaller landlords control much more of the US market. And at the end of the day, a house owned by a small landlord versus a corporate landlord doesn't change the supply-demand balance of a market. It still represents an available home.
The first and more important problem to solve is overall housing supply. Because that does change the supply-demand balance of a market. And once again, there's no shortage of data to support the finding that increased supply tends to moderate rental growth.
For the record, I also dislike using the term home to refer to single-family houses. Home is not a housing type. It is simply a place where people live permanently. So whenever I see a title like "US homes," I get confused, because I don't actually know what they're referring to.
If you read the article, it would appear they're only talking about single-family houses. But implying that these are the only kind of home feels to me like an anachronism.
