How Landlords of Small Rental Properties Decide Who Gets Housed and Who Gets Evicted

Abstract

Scholars and policymakers have long been interested in whether large-scale owners of rental properties have different management practices than smaller-scale owners and whether these differences matter for the housing stability of tenants. This is of particular concern among the 1- to 4-unit small rental properties that comprise half the nation’s rental housing stock. I conducted a nationwide survey supplemented with interviews to understand how owners (i) select their tenants and (ii) react to rent delinquencies. I find that larger-scale owners’ highly routinized property management systems make them much more likely to start the eviction process after a delinquency. However the tenant selection processes of professional owners also appear to result in a tenantry that has a somewhat higher delinquency rate, while the selection process for non-professional landlords raises fair housing concerns. I discuss how the link between the tenant selection and rent delinquency practices of landlords has a number of policy implications.

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