A new study by CURA Research Associate Anthony Damiano and CURA Director Edward Goetz examines how investor size and type influence outcomes in the single-family rental (SFR) market in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Comparing institutional players like REITs and private equity firms to smaller local landlords. Spatially, private equity firms were hyperconcentrated in lower income communities of color while REIT-owned homes were more concentrated in middle-income suburbs. They also found differences in terms of eviction rates by owner type. Among local landlords, the smallest landlords had the lowest average eviction rates and eviction rates rose as portfolio size increased. The highest eviction rates were found among in properties owned by REITs and PE firms. Eviction rates were 26% higher for REIT-owned homes and 17% higher for private equity owned homes compared to micro-landlord tenants even after controlling for housing unit and neighborhood factors. This research highlights how the dynamics of the growing SFR market are shaped by landlord size and type and raise the question of if policy interventions are needed to regulate the growth of institutional investors in the rental market.
Anthony Damiano
Anthony (Tony) Damiano received his PhD in Public Affairs from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in 2021. He specializes in quantitative and spatial methods. His research interests include housing policy, neighborhood change, structural racism and inequality.
Edward Goetz
Edward G. Goetz is director of CURA and a faculty member at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
Ed specializes in housing and local community development planning and policy. His research focuses on issues of race and poverty and how they affect housing policy planning and development. Before coming to the University of Minnesota in 1988, he worked at the mayor's Office of Housing and Economic Development in San Francisco and for several nonprofit community developers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He has served on the board of directors of nonprofit housing agencies in the Twin Cities, and on several regional commissions related to affordable housing and development.
He is the author of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities (Cornell University Press, 2018), New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy (Cornell University Press, 2013), Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America (2003, Urban Institute Press), Shelter Burden: Local Politics and Progressive Housing Policy (1993, Temple University Press), and co-editor of The New Localism: Comparative Urban Politics in a Global Era (1993, Sage Publications).
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