Corporate Ownership of NYC Multi-Unit Properties Associated with More Frequent Evictions, Higher Asking Rents, and Higher Shares of Voucher Holders

By Julian Mura-Kröger, NLIHC Research Intern  

A recent study published in Real Estate Economics by Ellen et al., “The Rise of Corporate Landlords: An Examination of Behavioral Differences in the Multifamily Market,” compared outcomes for multi-unit residential buildings owned by corporate and non-corporate landlords in New York City. Combining data from 2012 and 2023 obtained from a variety of sources, the authors assessed how eviction filings, housing code violations, rental asking prices, and voucher holder concentrations differ between these two classes of landlords. The study found that corporate landlords, on average, ask for 3% higher rents, file 2.1 more evictions per 100 units, and house an additional six voucher holders for every 1,000 units compared to their non-corporate counterparts.   

To carry out this study, the authors created a unique dataset combining data from four city-level databases (such as those on tax lots and property deeds), the New York State Office of Court Administration’s eviction filings, and asking for rent information from StreetEasy, a private real estate listing company. “Corporate” landlords were identified as building owners who self-designated under the "corporate owner” category in New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s annually updated landlord registry. “Non-corporate” landlords included those who self-designated under any other category in the registry.  

Corporate-owned buildings were more likely to be part of large portfolios—both in terms of the number of residential properties owned and the average number of rental units within those buildings—and they had higher average rents.   

Further controls for renovations, neighborhood ownership concentration, building size, building quality, landlord portfolio size, and time since sale were added to ensure that differences in a building’s physical and ownership characteristics were not confused with differences between corporate and non-corporate landlord behaviors. Ellen et al. found that this contrast could not be explained by the differences in corporate-owned building renovations, size, quality, and other aforementioned controls. This suggests that corporate owners’ increased attention to maximizing profits could be the explanatory factor in their higher rents, more frequent evictions, and greater voucher holder concentration, though they note that they are unable to test this directly.   

The authors further discovered that post-sale increases in rental asking prices were driven by sales of rental properties by non-corporate to corporate owners, with the latter charging 2-3% higher rents in the years following purchase. However, these and other impacts of corporate ownership on asking for rents were less intense for buildings in which a majority of units were rent-stabilized.   

Ellen et al. conclude that although there are statistically significant differences between corporate and non-corporate landlords’ behaviors towards tenants, these differences are not as extreme as one might expect. They suggest that lawmakers improve policy and its enforcement by focusing on individual landlords who have clear evidence of differential tenant treatment as opposed to targeting broad categories of property owners. Doing so will require making information on buildings and their owners more accessible and transparent, as evidenced by the complexity of this study’s sampling. The authors make this clear in their final statement, “to better target tenant protection policy and hold landlords accountable for any unfavorable actions, policymakers should be able to identify who they are” (p. 23).  

Read the publication here.