In our recent research on property owners and evictions, we have found that eviction filings in Bexar and Harris counties are concentrated among a small number of properties. But the concentration of evictions is not just limited to certain neighborhoods or at certain properties; it also includes a concentration among an even smaller number of property owners. The same owners appear on our top evictor lists year after year, across both counties.
Persistently high eviction filings suggest that this behavior is built in as a part of these owners’ standard practices. And these practices have portfolio-wide impacts that are not captured in a top 30 list.
Many landlords’ standard operations rely on a steady stream of evictions. In a future post, we will dig more deeply into high evictor business practices. But to broach that subject, we first need to understand who high evicting owners are, which is a task more challenging than it seems.
The ability to identify the owners who file the most evictions is critical to connect properties where tenants have similar experiences. Currently, this is being hampered by complex ownership structures that enable corporate secrecy to protect professional landlords from financial and legal risk. Policy that supports transparency around property ownership, eviction, and property conditions is the important first step toward enabling local systems that can address the harms of eviction and displacement.
Repeat owners on the top evictor lists
In Bexar County, 14 of the 30 highest evicting properties in 2024 were also on the 2023 list. In Harris County, more than two thirds – 21 of 30 – appeared on both the 2023 and 2024 top evictor lists. This degree of repetition suggests that high eviction filing rates are not isolated incidents or the result of a temporary circumstance. They reflect patterns that persist over time – patterns that are, at least in part, the result of the behavior of a handful of property owners.
Three large out-of-state owners (Abbey Residential, DRA Advisors, and Fundamental Partners) each have two properties among Harris County’s top 30. Three Pillars Group, a Houston-based private equity firm, appears three times.
In Bexar County, ownership is even more concentrated. Just two owners account for 10 of the top 30 highest evicting properties: Shippy Properties (aka Quantum Leap) and the San Antonio Housing Finance Corporation.
Two companies appear on both counties’ high evictor lists. American Landmark Apartments is a Florida-based firm operating more than 30,000 units across seven states that notably builds rent increases and displacement into their business strategy. American Landmark Apartments is almost entirely owned by Elco, an Israeli company with business ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Disrupt Equity, a Houston-based multifamily investment firm that markets opportunities to passive investors through a significant social media presence, has appeared on Harris County’s top evictor list two years running and recently acquired one of Bexar County’s top 30 properties from a mission-driven nonprofit (On Track Ministries, which owns yet another Bexar County top evictor).
Eviction patterns often track with ownership models and portfolio-wide practices. When the same owners appear repeatedly across multiple regions, it becomes essential to evaluate eviction behavior at the portfolio level, not just the property level.
Tax-exempt ownership structures hide chronic evictors
Opaque property ownership makes it difficult to get a better understanding of portfolio-wide practices and the increasing consolidation of property ownership alongside evictions. Connecting properties with the same owners can be challenging – even more so for properties with certain subsidies.
As we discussed in an earlier post, many top evicting properties benefit from public subsidies intended to create stability for low-income renters. The most common subsidies across both counties, tax-exempt private partnerships, allow lifetime 100% property tax exemptions in exchange for income-restricted units with rents below market level. For these properties, quasi-governmental entities like Public Facility Corporations (PFCs), Housing Finance Corporations (HFCs), or Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) own the property in partnership with a private organization that benefits from the tax-exemption. Both the public and non-public partners have an ownership stake in the property.
While identifying these non-public owners is difficult, it reveals even more repeat owners among Harris and Bexar counties’ top evictors.
At first, NRP Group does not appear to have any properties on Bexar County’s high evictor list. However, they are in fact the non-public partner for three properties we list as being “owned” by San Antonio Housing Trust PFC and three separate properties “owned” by San Antonio HFC. These six properties make NRP the owner with the most appearances on our top evictor lists across both counties. NRP Group is headquartered in Ohio, has developed over 67,000 units, and manages more than 32,000 units across the country.
LYND is the non-public partner for two of the top evicting tax-exempt properties in Bexar County. The San Antonio-based company has developed more than 47,000 units in 10 states, manages 16,000 units, and already has two other properties on Bexar County’s high-evictor list. Once we identify non-public partners, NRP, Shippy Properties, and LYND account for half of all top evicting properties in Bexar County.
Sterling Point in Harris County is “owned” by public partner Pecos County HFC, but non-public partner Austin-based Eureka Holdings, which already has another property on the Harris County top 30 list, has a more direct say in day-to-day decisions. The non-public partner for The Redford, New York City-based Fundamental Partners, already has two other top evicting Harris County properties. Fundamental Partners purchased these properties, all of which also appeared on the 2023 top evictor list, following foreclosure in 2023. Fundamental Partners owns over 45,000 units across more than 200 properties.
Obscured ownership at tax-exempt properties makes it more difficult to work out how these properties and their real owners fit into the eviction landscape of Texas cities. However, tax-exempt private partnerships are not the only types of deals with complicated ownership structures that can’t be fully explained with publicly available information. Complex ownership structures make it seem like a property is owned by a local organization or a small landlord with a modest local portfolio, or a public entity required to provide some public benefit – but in reality they are often run by national giants that employ harmful practices across their portfolios.
Policy tools to reveal high evictor owners
Evictions and the instability for low-income renters that they cause are shaped by law, policy, and business decisions. The persistence of high eviction rates at the same properties, under the same ownership, across multiple years suggests that these outcomes are not simply the result of tenant instability. They reflect management strategies and operational choices that actually contribute to tenant instability.
Rental registries are a key policy tool that can help identify owners that evict a high share of their residents across their portfolio and help local governments to proactively address harms. Rental registries contain basic information on ownership that can help connect properties in the same owner’s portfolio more easily. Cities can use rental registry status to require certain practices and standards and prevent harmful owner behavior. Pairing rental registries with a proactive inspection program allows cities to target persistent substandard physical conditions and improve tenant health, safety, and quality of life.
Governments can improve connections between datasets to help provide more and better information on ownership structures at properties. Counties can make it easier to connect appraisal district data and county clerk records using property IDs as opposed to legal descriptions. Cities can connect rental registry records with code violations to look at conditions across portfolios and inform targeted code enforcement. Connecting the county’s tax ID to the city’s rental registry enables easy analysis of, for example, potential retaliatory eviction filings following tenant reports of code violations.
Simple improvements to data systems can have a big impact. Verifying addresses before entering eviction filing records would remove a considerable amount of work that goes into analyzing filing data and connecting records at the same properties.
Publishing better data and using that data to hold property owners accountable supports more effective use of public funds. Data can be used to flag owners with a proven track record of harmful eviction practices or poor conditions at properties and block them from receiving further public subsidies.
Transparent ownership and eviction data helps address urgent policy needs:
- Helps local governments define and track “chronic” high-evictor owners across entire portfolios. Helps target tools to prevent or mitigate the harms of concentrated evictions.
- Helps identify eviction patterns to inform local decision making like where and how to allocate assistance and other resources.
- Critical first step for establishing enforcement mechanisms to prevent owners with persistent, portfolio-wide issues from receiving additional public funds in the future.
Property ownership tends to change less frequently than management companies and staff. Tenants may deal with multiple managers throughout their tenure, but ownership is likely to be more stable and has the ultimate say in how properties are run. Long-term accountability to tenants at individual properties must consider portfolio-wide practices and address the owners that do the most harm.
Quality public ownership and eviction data allow governments and the public to more effectively track and connect issues across portfolios, allowing for portfolio-wide enforcement and organizing. Improving transparency is an effective way to identify the actors causing the most local harm and build systems to help mitigate and prevent that harm.
