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Here is the number people keep arguing about, answered with county deed records instead of estimates.
Business entities (LLCs, corporations, and partnerships) own 21,718,314 parcels in the United States. That is 14.05% of all 154,578,153 parcels on record as of September 14, 2026.
Now the part that matters. Only 5,508,206 of those parcels are single-family homes. Measured against the 88,613,235 single-family parcels nationwide, that is 6.2%.
Both numbers are true. Mixing them up is why the public figure floats anywhere between 3% and 20%.
What the 14.1% Number Actually Counts
A parcel is not a house. It is any piece of recorded real property: a farm, a strip mall, a vacant lot, a duplex, or a house.
Count every entity-owned parcel in the country and 74.6% of them are not single-family homes. A farmer who puts 400 acres into a family LLC shows up in the 14.05%. So does the dentist who owns his practice building. Neither is competing with a first-time buyer for a three-bedroom ranch.
That gap explains why the affordability coverage and the parcel data never line up. Most published estimates come from SEC filings or small metro samples, so they measure large institutions buying houses. The GAO reported in 2026 that institutional investors owned 1% to 3% of single-family homes across the six metros it studied. Econofact puts it at 3% to 4% of the single-family rental stock.
Those findings line up with ours. The 6.2% counts every business entity, from a two-house LLC to a public REIT. The GAO's 1% to 3% counts only large institutions. Most of that 6.2% is small owners.
How We Counted
The source is the owner party type recorded on the deed and county assessor record, for all 154.6 million parcels in the DealMachine database. It is a recorded field, not a model.
A parcel counts as entity-owned when the owner of record is a company rather than a person. Trusts, banks, and government owners are excluded. Single-family means parcels the county classifies as single-family, 88,613,235 nationwide. Townhouses and condos are excluded.
One robustness check. Using only parcels where the assessor records a unit count of one, the figure is 7.6% (3,894,520 of 51,062,427). That field is populated on about a third of parcels, so we lead with the broader classification. Either way the answer lands between 6% and 8%.
The 10 States With the Highest Entity Ownership
Ranked by share of all parcels.
| Rank | State | Entity-owned parcels | Share of all parcels |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | 247,763 | 27.3% |
| 2 | North Dakota | 138,610 | 21.8% |
| 3 | South Dakota | 142,874 | 21.7% |
| 4 | Mississippi | 401,182 | 20.7% |
| 5 | Nebraska | 224,045 | 20.6% |
| 6 | Iowa | 501,126 | 20.2% |
| 7 | Idaho | 228,286 | 20.2% |
| 8 | Utah | 245,694 | 17.9% |
| 9 | Arkansas | 411,731 | 17.9% |
| 10 | Oklahoma | 385,694 | 17.5% |
Three Things the Full Ranking Shows
1. The top of the list is farm country
Montana leads at 27.3%. North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Idaho all clear 20%. These are agricultural states that hold farm ground in family entities. That is the clearest sign the 14.05% headline is not a housing statistic.
2. The states in the headlines rank in the middle
North Carolina is 20th at 15.5%. Georgia is 22nd at 15.3%. Texas is 39th at 12.8%. Tennessee ranks 46th at 10.6%. Those are the states named in most coverage of corporate landlords, because institutional buying is concentrated there in absolute terms. As a share of all parcels they are unremarkable.
3. California ranks 47th and New Jersey is last
California sits at 10.4%, the inverse of how the state usually gets described. New Jersey is last at 4.0%. We checked that one: New Jersey records an owner party type on 94.4% of its parcels, so the low number is not missing data. It simply has the lowest business-entity ownership rate in the country.
Why This Matters If You Buy Houses
Most investors treat an entity name as a dead end. The mail comes back, the phone number belongs to a registered agent, and the lead gets skipped.
That instinct costs you. There are 5.5 million single-family homes owned by a business, and most of those businesses are small. Harvard's researchers found that owners holding 1,000 or more properties account for just 2% of small rental properties, while owners with one or two units hold 66%. Those small owners sell. The institutional portfolios that never sell are a small piece of the total.
A house held by an out-of-area entity is an absentee-owned property with one extra layer on top. If 6.2% of the homes in a 40,000-home county are entity-owned, that is 2,500 parcels you are writing off over a bounced postcard.
How to Work an Entity-Owned List
- Pull the list first. Filter a county by Corporate Owned and single-family, and look at the count before you spend anything.
- Start with the Secretary of State. Every state has a free business registry. Search the entity name and you usually get a registered agent and often the managing member. That beats a cold skip trace on an LLC owned property.
- Check the deed for the signer. A title search shows who signed when the entity bought the house. That name is a real person.
- Then skip trace the human. With the member's name in hand, corporate skip tracing works like any other lead.
- Prioritize small portfolios. An entity holding one to five houses behaves like a mom-and-pop seller. An entity holding 900 does not.
If you want to check who owns a specific property before building a list, start there and work backward.
Entity Ownership in All 50 States and D.C.
The complete index, ranked by share of all parcels. Counts and shares differ: Texas has the second-highest raw count at 1,789,010 but ranks 39th by share, because it has 13.9 million parcels in total.
| Rank | State | Entity-owned parcels | Total parcels | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | 247,763 | 907,897 | 27.3% |
| 2 | North Dakota | 138,610 | 635,492 | 21.8% |
| 3 | South Dakota | 142,874 | 657,435 | 21.7% |
| 4 | Mississippi | 401,182 | 1,938,951 | 20.7% |
| 5 | Nebraska | 224,045 | 1,088,507 | 20.6% |
| 6 | Iowa | 501,126 | 2,476,813 | 20.2% |
| 7 | Idaho | 228,286 | 1,129,408 | 20.2% |
| 8 | Utah | 245,694 | 1,370,800 | 17.9% |
| 9 | Arkansas | 411,731 | 2,297,364 | 17.9% |
| 10 | Oklahoma | 385,694 | 2,202,869 | 17.5% |
| 11 | Kansas | 280,795 | 1,623,922 | 17.3% |
| 12 | Louisiana | 436,259 | 2,532,034 | 17.2% |
| 13 | Wisconsin | 590,392 | 3,429,178 | 17.2% |
| 14 | Ohio | 1,101,288 | 6,424,633 | 17.1% |
| 15 | Indiana | 620,349 | 3,653,419 | 17.0% |
| 16 | Wyoming | 57,953 | 344,385 | 16.8% |
| 17 | Nevada | 208,030 | 1,265,066 | 16.4% |
| 18 | Alabama | 507,849 | 3,128,372 | 16.2% |
| 19 | Delaware | 82,563 | 517,063 | 16.0% |
| 20 | North Carolina | 909,658 | 5,860,279 | 15.5% |
| 21 | South Carolina | 488,081 | 3,195,667 | 15.3% |
| 22 | Georgia | 741,629 | 4,859,517 | 15.3% |
| 23 | Michigan | 807,922 | 5,381,161 | 15.0% |
| 24 | Vermont | 51,399 | 348,183 | 14.8% |
| 25 | Missouri | 487,193 | 3,321,637 | 14.7% |
| 26 | New York | 921,660 | 6,305,891 | 14.6% |
| 27 | West Virginia | 198,727 | 1,371,891 | 14.5% |
| 28 | Minnesota | 454,492 | 3,148,178 | 14.4% |
| 29 | Florida | 1,541,664 | 10,771,157 | 14.3% |
| 30 | Arizona | 429,862 | 3,027,657 | 14.2% |
| 31 | Kentucky | 345,858 | 2,453,529 | 14.1% |
| 32 | Connecticut | 188,395 | 1,342,165 | 14.0% |
| 33 | New Mexico | 204,510 | 1,457,935 | 14.0% |
| 34 | District of Columbia | 29,558 | 216,028 | 13.7% |
| 35 | Virginia | 536,721 | 3,947,805 | 13.6% |
| 36 | Rhode Island | 56,906 | 422,213 | 13.5% |
| 37 | Colorado | 354,163 | 2,728,803 | 13.0% |
| 38 | Maryland | 309,583 | 2,396,859 | 12.9% |
| 39 | Texas | 1,789,010 | 13,930,873 | 12.8% |
| 40 | Maine | 110,561 | 918,287 | 12.0% |
| 41 | New Hampshire | 84,291 | 709,324 | 11.9% |
| 42 | Massachusetts | 292,105 | 2,546,084 | 11.5% |
| 43 | Illinois | 655,933 | 5,857,140 | 11.2% |
| 44 | Pennsylvania | 671,029 | 6,001,545 | 11.2% |
| 45 | Hawaii | 59,896 | 562,118 | 10.7% |
| 46 | Tennessee | 383,360 | 3,609,536 | 10.6% |
| 47 | California | 1,243,288 | 11,989,098 | 10.4% |
| 48 | Alaska | 30,363 | 310,545 | 9.8% |
| 49 | Oregon | 161,641 | 1,752,509 | 9.2% |
| 50 | Washington | 237,656 | 3,032,709 | 7.8% |
| 51 | New Jersey | 128,717 | 3,178,222 | 4.0% |
| – | United States | 21,718,314 | 154,578,153 | 14.05% |
Frequently Asked Questions
How many homes do corporations own in the United States?
Business entities own 21,718,314 parcels nationwide, but only 5,508,206 are single-family homes. The rest is farmland, commercial property, vacant land, and multifamily. If someone quotes you 21 million homes, they are counting parcels.
Which state has the most LLC-owned property?
By share, Montana at 27.3%. By raw count, Texas at 1,789,010, because Texas has far more parcels overall. New Jersey has the lowest share at 4.0%.
Can you wholesale a house owned by an LLC?
Yes. The contract is signed by whoever can bind the entity, usually a managing member or officer. You will want the operating agreement or a corporate resolution showing that person can sign. Title companies check this routinely.
The Takeaway
14.05% of American parcels are owned by a business. 6.2% of single-family homes are. The first is mostly farms and commercial buildings. The second is the one to use when the conversation is about housing.
To see the entity-owned inventory in your market, filter any county by owner type and get a count before you pay anything. Start with DealMachine's property data.