28 statistics on who owns and who runs US rental properties, computed by RapidEye Research from the raw 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey, which the U.S. Census Bureau (census.gov) runs for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (huduser.gov). They cover who handles day-to-day management, how that changes with property size and owner type, how many other rental properties owners hold, and how many hours owners spend managing. Every figure counts properties or units, not landlords as people, and carries a 90% margin of error from the survey's own method.
Key statistics
6 highlights from this report
Key statistics
Key takeaways
Owners run an estimated 56% of US rental properties themselves, far more than any other kind of manager, but paid managers run most rental units (61.5%). Properties with 1 to 4 units, the vast majority of the stock, are most often self-managed, while properties with 25 or more units, which hold 44.9% of rental units, are mostly run by hired managers. Among properties owned by individual investors, self-management fell from 80% in the 2021 survey to 62.5% in 2024.
Owners run 56% of US rental properties themselves. Management companies run 23%.
Counted by units, paid managers run 61.5% of US rentals. Owners run 35.5%.
Owners self-manage 78% of 2 to 4 unit properties but 9% of properties with 50+ units.
Individual investors self-manage 62.5% of their properties, down from the 80% the 2021 survey found.
45% of rental properties are their owner's only rental. 15% belong to owners with 11 or more others.
Owner-managed rentals take a median of 5 hours a month.
How we built this report
Every figure on this page is a computation we ran in November 2026 against the raw federal survey files, not a number copied from another publication.
- Downloaded the public use microdata
We pulled the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey public use file from the Census Bureau: 4,425 rental properties whose owners or managers were interviewed from June to November 2024 about the 2023 calendar year. The survey asks who has responsibility for day-to-day management, what kind of entity owns the property, whether that owner holds other rental properties, and how many hours the owner spends managing.
- Applied the survey weights
Every figure uses the survey's property weight, so the estimates describe all 18.97 million US rental properties in scope rather than the sample. Unit figures weight each property by its number of units.
- Validated against published totals
Our weighted counts match the Census Bureau's published 2024 key estimates exactly: 18,965,000 properties, plus the counts with and without a mortgage. Our ownership shares match the Census figures reported by HousingWire (housingwire.com): individual investors own 59% of properties and 32% of units, and LLCs own 21% of properties and 43% of units.
- Margins of error from the survey's own method
Each figure carries a 90% margin of error from the survey's 100 replicate weights, using the successive difference replication formula the Census Bureau documents. That formula reproduces the Census Bureau's own published 2024 margins exactly (plus or minus 271,000 properties on the total). Groups with fewer than 50 sampled properties, or too much uncertainty to rank (a relative standard error above 30%), are merged into wider bands or left unprinted.
- Rebuilt the 2021 comparison from scratch
For the then-and-now figures we ran the same code on the 2021 survey file, using the identical question and owner category. Counting all individual-investor properties, as the widely quoted table does, it reproduces the 2021 figures: 80.0% self-managed and 9.64% run by a management company.
- Second review
Written by one co-founder, reviewed by the other before publishing, with every printed number recomputed independently from the raw file.
These figures describe rental properties, not landlords as people: an owner with ten properties appears ten times. The survey covers US residential properties with at least one rental unit in 2023. It excludes public housing, group quarters such as dorms and nursing homes, and boats, RVs and vans, and because its sample was drawn from the 2021 American Housing Survey it does not include properties built after late 2020. "Owner" includes an unpaid agent of the owner, such as a family member. 4.9% of properties (about 0.93 million) did not answer the management question, and 8.7% did not say whether the owner holds other rental properties; shares are of properties that answered. Properties whose owner holds others but did not say how many are spread across the bands in proportion. Assisted living and military properties got a short interview without these questions and count among those that did not answer. The public file caps unit counts for very large properties, so unit-weighted shares are close to, not identical with, Census tables (49.9 million units in the file against 49.7 million published). Answers are reported by owners, managers or their agents.
Who owns and who manages US rental properties, by the numbers
All 28 figures, grouped by question. Each is RapidEye Research's weighted analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey public use file, except the 2021 comparisons, which use the 2021 file the same way.
Who runs day-to-day management
The survey asks who has responsibility for the day-to-day management of each rental property: the owner or an unpaid agent such as a family member, a management agent the owner employs directly, a management company, or someone else. Of the 18.0 million rental properties that answered, owners run an estimated 56%, far more than any other kind of manager. Weight the same answers by units and paid managers run most of them, because the properties owners run tend to be small.
Statistic 1
The owner or an unpaid family member runs day-to-day management of 56.2% of US rental properties, about 10.1 million.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 2
A management company runs 22.7% of rental properties, about 4.1 million.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 3
A management agent employed directly by the owner runs 15.4%, about 2.8 million.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 4
Counted by units, management companies run 37.8% of US rental units, owners 35.5% and owner-employed agents 23.6%.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 5
A paid manager, either a company or an agent the owner employs, runs 38.1% of rental properties but 61.5% of rental units.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Who runs day-to-day management, by properties and by units
Share of US rental properties and units that answered, 2024.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey. 90% margins of error: plus or minus 3.5 to 7.7 points for properties, 1.9 to 3.1 points for units. "Other" arrangements are too uncertain to report precisely.
What this means: owners run more rental properties than anyone else, while paid managers run most rental units. By units, management companies (37.8%) and owners (35.5%) are too close to rank. For what those paid managers charge, see our property management fee statistics.
Management by property size
Self-management peaks at small multifamily properties and falls steeply with size. Single-unit homes are 82.9% of US rental properties but only 31.5% of rental units; properties with 50 or more units are 0.4% of properties but 39.4% of units. That is why the property count and the unit count tell different stories.
Statistic 6
Owners self-manage 78.3% of 2 to 4 unit rental properties, the highest share of any size.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 7
Single-unit rentals: 53.0% are run by the owner, 23.5% by a management company and 16.8% by an agent the owner employs.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 8
Properties with 5 to 24 units: owners (38.6%) and management companies (37.0%) run about equal shares, and owner-employed agents run 22.5%.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 9
Properties with 25 to 49 units: 46.4% management company, 33.2% owner-employed agent, 19.2% owner-run.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 10
Properties with 50 or more units: 54.1% management company, 36.2% owner-employed agent, and just 8.5% owner-run.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 11
Single-unit homes are 82.9% of US rental properties but 31.5% of rental units. Properties with 50 or more units are 0.4% of properties and 39.4% of units.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Who runs the property, by property size
Share of US rental properties in each size band, 2024.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey. Margins of error are in the table below.
| Property size | Rental properties | Owner or unpaid family | Agent employed by owner | Management company |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 unit | 15.7 million | 53.0%±9.2 | 16.8%±4.2 | 23.5%±6.8 |
| 2 to 4 units | 2.8 million | 78.3%±5.4 | 5.7%±2.2 | 15.0%±4.7 |
| 5 to 24 units | 330,000 | 38.6%±7.1 | 22.5%±5.6 | 37.0%±3.6 |
| 25 to 49 units | 74,000 | 19.2%±4.5 | 33.2%±7.8 | 46.4%±8.6 |
| 50 or more units | 81,000 | 8.5%±2.2 | 36.2%±2.4 | 54.1%±2.4 |
| All properties | 19.0 million | 56.2%±7.7 | 15.4%±3.5 | 22.7%±5.7 |
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey. Shares are of properties that answered the management question; rows do not sum to 100% because "other" arrangements are left out. Property counts are all properties in each band.
What this means: self-management is most common at duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes, but single-unit homes are so numerous that they make up 78.2% of all owner-managed properties. Above 25 units, hired help is the norm, split between management companies and managers the owner employs directly.
Management by type of owner
Individual investors, including couples and other joint owners, own 58.9% of US rental properties; the full ownership split, and what each owner type spends on upkeep, is in our rental property maintenance cost statistics. Here is who runs those properties day to day.
Statistic 12
Owners self-manage 62.5% of properties owned by individual investors. A management company runs 18.1% and an owner-employed agent 13.3%.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 13
Properties owned through an LLC, LP or LLP: 48.7% owner-run, 30.1% management company, 17.9% owner-employed agent.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
What this means: holding a property in an LLC does not mean a professional runs it; nearly half of LLC-owned properties are still run by the owner. The margins are wide (plus or minus 9.0 points for individual investors, 10.3 for LLCs) and the gap between the two is just outside sampling error, so read it as real but not precise. Trusts, REITs, nonprofits and corporations are too uncertain to report separately.
Where "80% of landlords self-manage" comes from
The figure that landlord blogs and software vendors quote, that 80% of individually owned rentals are self-managed, matches the 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey: we rebuilt it from the 2021 file and got 80.0%, the same number iPropertyManagement (ipropertymanagement.com) publishes. The 2024 survey asked the identical question with identical answer choices, so the measure is the same; what changed around it is covered below the chart.
Statistic 14
In the 2021 survey, owners self-managed 80.0% of the 13.3 million properties owned by individual investors.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 15
In the 2024 survey the share was 62.5%, down 17.5 points. The 90% margin of error on that change is plus or minus 10.3 points, so the drop is larger than sampling error.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2021 and 2024 Rental Housing Finance Surveys
Statistic 16
The share of individual-investor properties run by a management company rose from 9.6% to 18.1% (change plus or minus 6.8 points).
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2021 and 2024 Rental Housing Finance Surveys
Statistic 17
Across all rental properties, the self-managed share fell from 70.3% in 2021 to 56.2% in 2024 (change plus or minus 8.9 points).
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2021 and 2024 Rental Housing Finance Surveys
Properties owned by individual investors: 2021 survey vs 2024 survey
Same question, same owner category, same method.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2021 and 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey public use files. Segments without a label are either too uncertain to print as figures or, on small screens, too narrow to label (every printed figure is in the statistics above), and the change in the agent share is within the margin of error.
What this means: the 80% figure was accurate for 2021 and is now out of date, but read the size of the shift with care. The 2021 survey asked about 2020, a pandemic year, and the 2024 survey about 2023. The 2024 survey counts fewer properties as owned by individual investors (11.2 million, down from 13.3 million) and more with no reported owner type (1.6 million, up from 1.0 million), and more properties skipped the management question (4.9%, up from 1.6%), so part of the shift may reflect which properties land in each group. It is not only that, though: across all single-unit rentals, whoever owns them, the self-managed share fell from 71.3% to 53.0% (change plus or minus 10.5 points).
How many other rental properties owners hold
New in 2024, the survey asks whether the property's owner owns other residential rental properties, and if so how many, in bands (1 to 10, 11 to 100, 101 to 1,000, more than 1,000). The bands mean it cannot produce an exact average like the widely repeated "1.38 properties per landlord", but it can say what share of the rental stock belongs to owners of each size. The question is about the legal ownership entity, so an investor who holds each property in a separate LLC can appear as a single-property owner. And these are shares of properties: an owner of 50 properties is counted 50 times, so the share of owners with only one rental is higher than the share of properties.
Statistic 18
44.6% of US rental properties are their owner's only rental property.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 19
40.6% belong to owners with 1 to 10 other rental properties, and 14.7% to owners with 11 or more.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 20
Among properties owned by individual investors, 50.4% are the owner's only rental and 42.3% belong to owners with 1 to 10 others.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 21
73.3% of properties owned through an LLC, LP or LLP belong to an owner with other rental properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 22
Among properties with 50 or more units, 40.5% belong to owners with 11 or more other rental properties and 11.6% to owners with more than 100.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 23
Counted by units, 59.0% of US rental units are in properties whose owner holds other rental properties.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 24
Owners with no other rental self-manage 58.2% of their properties, and owners with 1 to 10 other rentals 64.9%: not statistically different.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
How many other rental properties the owner holds
Share of US rental properties that answered, 2024.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey. Segments without a label are either too uncertain to print as figures or, on small screens, too narrow to label (every printed figure is in the statistics above). 90% margins of error: plus or minus 4.2 to 9.3 points for all properties, up to 16 points for the owner-type rows.
What this means: single-property owners hold an estimated 45% of US rental properties and 41% of rental units; the rest belong to owners with other rentals. Owners with a handful of other rentals self-manage about as often as single-property owners; the size of the property matters far more.
Hours owners spend managing
Where the owner runs the property, the survey asks how many hours a month the owner, or an unpaid agent such as a family member, spends managing it. 96.0% of owner-managed properties answered. These are long-term rental figures; for short-term rental hosts, see how many hours hosting actually takes.
Statistic 25
The median owner-managed rental property takes 5 hours a month to manage.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 26
44.5% of owner-managed properties take 4 hours a month or less, and 83.9% take under 20 hours.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 27
7.0% of owner-managed properties take 40 hours a month or more, roughly a full working week.
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
Statistic 28
Properties with 5 to 24 units take far longer: a median of 24 hours a month, against 5 for a single-unit rental and 8 for a 2 to 4 unit property (the 5 and 8 are not statistically different).
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey
| Hours per month | 0 to 4 | 5 to 9 | 10 to 39 | 40 or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner-managed properties | 44.5%±6.9 | 19.5%±9.2 | 29.0%±8.3 | 7.0%±3.1 |
RapidEye Research analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey. The survey caps very high answers. Medians by size carry 90% margins of error of about 2, 5 and 9 hours; properties with 25 or more units are too uncertain among owner-managed properties to give a reliable median.
What this means: for most owner-managed properties, management takes a few hours a month, a side job rather than a business. The time climbs once a property passes four units. How often landlords and their managers inspect is covered in our rental property inspection statistics.
Cite this study
Academic or press use: copy a ready-made reference. RapidEye is the publisher.
Quick FAQ
How many landlords self-manage their rental properties?
56.2% of US rental properties were run day to day by the owner or an unpaid family member in 2024, about 10.1 million of the 18.0 million properties that answered, according to RapidEye Research's analysis of the 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey from the Census Bureau and HUD. Among properties owned by individual investors the share was 62.5%. The survey counts properties, not landlords, so an owner with several properties is counted once per property.
What percentage of rental properties are managed by a property management company?
22.7% of US rental properties, and 37.8% of rental units, were run day to day by a management company in 2024. Counting managers the owner employs directly as well, 38.1% of properties and 61.5% of units had a paid manager. Large buildings drive the unit figure: management companies run 54.1% of properties with 50 or more units.
Is it true that 80% of landlords self-manage?
The 80% figure comes from the 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey, in which owners self-managed 80.0% of properties owned by individual investors. The same question in the 2024 survey gives 62.5%, a drop of 17.5 points that is larger than the survey's margin of error (plus or minus 10.3 points at 90% confidence). Over the same period the share run by a management company rose from 9.6% to 18.1%. Part of the change may reflect shifts in which properties the surveys classed as individually owned and which answered, but the self-managed share also fell across all single-unit rentals, from 71.3% to 53.0%.
How many properties does the average landlord own?
The 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey, the first to ask, records an owner's other rental properties in bands rather than exact counts, so it cannot give a reliable average. It shows that 44.6% of US rental properties are their owner's only rental property, 40.6% belong to owners with 1 to 10 other rental properties, and 14.7% belong to owners with 11 or more. These are shares of properties, so owners with many properties are counted once per property, and the question is about the legal ownership entity, so an investor who holds each property in a separate LLC can appear as a single-property owner.
How many hours a month do landlords spend managing a rental property?
For properties the owner manages, the median is 5 hours a month. 44.5% take 4 hours or less and 83.9% take under 20 hours, while 7.0% take 40 hours or more. Properties with 5 to 24 units take far longer, a median of 24 hours a month, against 5 for a single-unit rental and 8 for a 2 to 4 unit property.
Do owners of small apartment buildings manage them themselves?
Mostly, yes. Owners or unpaid family members run 78.3% of 2 to 4 unit rental properties, the highest share of any size, against 53.0% of single-unit rentals, 38.6% of 5 to 24 unit properties and 8.5% of properties with 50 or more units.
Data sources
Every figure on this page is our own weighted computation from the federal survey files below, validated against the Census Bureau's published totals before publishing.
U.S. Census Bureau2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey public use file, codebook, questionnaire and methodologycensus.govU.S. Census Bureau2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey public use file and questionnaire, for the then-and-now comparisoncensus.gov
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentRental Housing Finance Survey sponsorhuduser.gov
HousingWireReport of the Census Bureau's 2024 ownership shares, used to validate our weightinghousingwire.com
iPropertyManagementLandlord statistics page, where the 2021 "80% owner-managed" figure is publishedipropertymanagement.com
RapidEye ResearchWeighted computations and replicate-weight margins of error from the files above, November 2026rapideyeinspections.com