The Problem with Corporate Landlords
Corporations own a growing share of the housing market across the country, and nowhere has been as affected as Georgia, and the Atlanta metro area in particular. But the corporations we’re focused on are not small scale LLCs owned by an individual or family. Instead, they’re complex Wall Street investment firms operating with massive amounts of capital that allow them to crowd out any other potential property buyers, establishing monopolistic control over rental markets as a result, all while hiding the full scope of their property holdings behind dense networks of shell corporations.
The data featured on our county profiles page focuses on corporate-owned single-family rental properties, but these corporations also control a growing share of multi-family apartments. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project estimates that 22.8% of multi-family apartments in Georgia are owned by private equity firms, more than any other state. It is properties like these that have been most affected by the application of illegal price-fixing algorithms like RealPage, which the White House Council of Economic Advisors estimates led to a $181/month increase in rents across the Atlanta metro area in 2023, again more than any other metro area across the country.
While corporate-owned single-family rentals tend to be concentrated in Atlanta’s outlying suburbs, corporate-owned apartments are much more common throughout the urban core. So regardless of what type of building you live in or where, corporations have taken over Georgia’s housing market with devastating effects.
Impacts of Corporate Landlords
Higher Prices
Corporate landlords’ business model relies on extracting as much profit from properties as possible. Practically all evidence suggests that they have played an active role in driving prices higher and higher for regular people. An analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that in the 30 metro Atlanta ZIP codes with the most corporate landlord-owned properties, home values grew twice as fast as the 30 ZIP codes with the fewest corporate landlord-owned properties. One study found that at the level of individual properties owned by corporate landlords, in the three years following a merger between firms, rents increased by 3.5% and house prices by 6%. Given this pattern, it’s no surprise that Zillow estimates rents in single-family rental properties across metro Atlanta have more than doubled in the last decade, from just $1,098 in January 2015 to $2,201 in October 2025.
On top of their higher rents, corporate landlords add on various hidden fees (“junk fees”), which raise the effective price of rent without any increase in services. Corporate landlords like Invitation Homes and Greystar have recently agreed to out-of-court settlements with the Federal Trade Commission for $48 million and $24 million, respectively, over unfair and deceptive practices related to junk fees.
Worse Conditions
At the same time as these companies are driving up prices, they’re also providing a lower quality product. Again, anecdotal evidence provides countless instances of corporate landlords failing in their legal obligation to provide a safe and habitable premises for tenants to live in, from months without air conditioning or other necessary appliances, to rampant mold and collapsing ceilings, among other issues. But research from Atlanta and elsewhere across the country has confirmed that these are not just coincidences. Larger corporate landlords have been shown to have a demonstrably higher rate of code enforcement violations than smaller and non-corporate landlords. In a recent analysis of Atlanta, Georgia Tech professor Brian An and colleagues found that “a 10% increase in landlord’s ownership scale would effectively double the odds of having a serious code violation in their properties”.
Although the most significant impacts of these corporate landlords fall on those who are forced into renting from them, these companies have dramatically affected the housing market across the board, particularly for prospective homebuyers who have been crowded out of the market by these companies. Thanks to their massive cash reserves and algorithmic buying practices, corporate landlords are able to scoop up properties as soon as they hit the market, making all cash offers above asking while waiving contingencies, something that most first-time homebuyers are simply unable to compete with. Research by Dr. Brian An at Georgia Tech has shown that metro Atlanta suffered a loss of approximately $5 billion in home equity from 2007-2016 because of the rise of these corporate landlords, with ⅔ of that coming from predominantly Black neighborhoods. Further, he estimates that $1.25 billion of this home equity loss between 2011-2021 comes from just the City of Atlanta alone. Instead, this wealth is transferred to Wall Street investors and corporations headquartered out-of-state, rather than being reinvested in Georgia’s economy and communities.
eviction + displacement
Corporate landlords are ultimately driven by maximizing their profits at any costs. As a result, these companies have been shown to evict tenants at higher rates than smaller landlords everywhere from Atlanta, to Boston, and Las Vegas. Large corporate landlords are especially reliant on serial eviction filings as a way of forcing tenants into paying back rent, effectively outsourcing their rent collections to already overburdened local court systems. The end result of this tendency is not only manifest in the countless individual lives that have been affected by the violence of eviction, but also in the collective displacement of longstanding residents from their communities.
Crowded out of homeownership
who are these companies?
While many of these companies operate in only one market segment or the other, some larger firms have shared ownership. For instance, the private equity giant Blackstone originally controlled Invitation Homes before spinning it off as a separate publicly-traded company in 2017. Since that time, Blackstone has acquired Tricon Residential to reestablish their foothold in the single-family rental space, while also controlling firms like AIR Communities and American Campus Communities in the multi-family market. Starwood Capital is another firm that is active across both the single and multi-family housing segments, as well as being heavily invested in hotels.
Even though these firms are specialized in certain segments of the housing market - essentially limiting the competition between them - they all share a common set of exploitative business practices that result in the kinds of issues presented above. Ending the corporate takeover of Georgia’s housing market means taking on all of these companies and their corporate lobbyists in order to make housing more affordable for all.
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Progress Residential
Invitation Homes
Main Street Renewal
Tricon Residential
First Key Homes
American Homes 4 Rent
Starwood Capital
Avenue One
Open House
Vinebrook Homes
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Blackstone
Greystar
Brookfield
Starwood Capital
CIM Group
Related Companies
Carlyle Group
Cortland