Why is it so hard to collect local rental data?

More than one-third of U.S. households are renters, but it’s often difficult for localities to track property owners and collect data that could improve the overall rental landscape. Local rental registries could help.

A rental registry, at its most basic level, is a database of rental addresses and their owners. Some cities have rental licensing programs, which is similar to a registry but treats rental properties as businesses. 

They often include contact information for a property manager or landlord so tenants and city officials know precisely who to contact when there are health and safety issues, said Claudia Aiken, director of new research partnerships at the Housing Solutions Lab in New York University’s Furman Center.

“Without a registry, a locality doesn't necessarily know which properties are rental properties or who owns them,” she said, especially if a property is listed as belonging to an LLC or investor. “So just doing the very basics of making sure that all rental properties are up to code can be difficult.” 

Having a record of rental properties makes it easier to conduct proactive inspections and track code violations, rather than rely on a complaint-based system for addressing housing issues, Aiken said. That shifts more power to tenants, who may otherwise avoid filing complaints out of fear of retribution.

Minneapolis, for example, uses its rental licensing program to support a robust inspection system. There are more than 23,000 licensed properties across the city, accounting for more than 100,000 units, according to the city’s Director of Inspection Services April Bogard. More than half of Minneapolis residents rent their homes, Bogard said, so ensuring units are code compliant is critically important.

“We feel it's important for landlords to have clear minimum standards for how they need to manage and run their properties,” Bogard said.

Landlords and property owners are required to enroll their properties in the city’s rental licensing program, and they must renew that license annually to ensure all information is up to date. The program also requires that any property owners who don’t live in the area have a local contact listed.

“For us, having clean data is critically important, not only for us to be able to do our work, but it's really important for tenants as well to be able to contact who they need to,” Bogard said.

Each property falls within a “property conditions tier” based on two years’ of data about code violations and the owner’s responsiveness to addressing issues. The tiering system determines how often each property is inspected.

Much of the information the city has about the owners of rental properties is publicly available through an online portal, making it easier for tenants to know who is in charge of their property and how to get in touch. Renters can also see which tier a property falls under, giving them an idea of what to expect in terms of conditions and management’s responsiveness. 

Despite their practicality, many cities do not have a rental registry. While creating a database of addresses and their respective points of contact may seem like a straightforward initiative, cities often encounter a range of obstacles when it comes to piecing one together.

The Housing Solutions Lab is working to better understand the costs and challenges of implementing rental registries, but Aiken said resistance from landlords and a lack of understanding of the usefulness of a registry are likely factors in the scarcity of registries. 

Some states preempt cities from mandatory rental registries. That’s the case in Oklahoma, where in 2019, Tulsa moved to create a voluntary rental registry, said Kendra Wise, environmental health services manager for the city’s health department.

The department had incentives for landlords who voluntarily enrolled, including window decals that denote a unit as a safe and healthy property, free lead testing and rodent surveys. But Wise said that as she talked with property owners, many were hesitant to disclose the addresses of all their units for fear of how it might affect competition. 

Others were not enticed by the offered incentives as they didn’t have trouble finding renters in a tight housing market. Plus, when the department planned to launch the registry in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic derailed those plans as the department shifted to focus more on education initiatives to keep residents housed.

San Marcos, Texas, began requiring property owners to register their units in 2021. But it’s been challenging to get landlords to participate without the will or resources to penalize those who don’t comply, said the city’s Director of Neighborhood Enhancement Greg Carr. Plus, with limited staff, maintaining a registry is a big lift alongside competing priorities.

“The reason we don't see a lot of these is there's not a lot of value in just the registry,” Carr said. San Marcos is working to establish a rental inspection program for apartments this year, at which point a registry will be useful, he added. But until then, it’s challenging to justify dedicating staff hours to collecting names and addresses when there doesn’t appear to be much return on investment. 

Despite the obstacles, rental registries appear to be gaining some momentum. During the pandemic, the Housing Solutions Lab saw more interest from cities seeking guidance on developing registries, Aiken said. Late last year, Rep. Maxine Waters and then-Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, both Democrats, introduced the Know Who Owns Your Home Act that would create a national registry and make it easier to track properties owned by corporations or private equity firms.

“A lot of the bill … is designed so that tenants can avail themselves of the rights and protections that they have,” said Noelle Porter, director of government affairs for the National Housing Law Project. “But this also would be the first opportunity we had to better understand exactly how many units are owned by which corporate landlords [and] how they've consolidated the market.”