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Tenants now shop for landlords like they’re hunting for their next property. They browse neighborhood groups, sort listings by owner rather than by management companies, and ignore listings that mention stopping by a leasing office.
These renters are searching for a private landlord.
Fortunately for tenants, that search offers plenty of opportunity. Nearly half of the country’s 49.7 million rental units are on properties with four or fewer units, giving tenants a good chance of finding their preferred arrangement. Not all small properties belong to an individual owner, though, because institutional investors own some, too.
It’s easy to see why tenants search out private landlords. Research indicates that corporate landlords ask higher rents and file evictions more frequently than other owners. Federal regulators have also reached multimillion-dollar settlements with large rental companies over mandatory fees that were left out of advertised rents. A private landlord, on the other hand, is one person who can answer a maintenance request directly, consider an exception for a well-behaved pet, or work out a plan for when rent runs late.
With that in mind, TurboTenant will explore what a private landlord is, five benefits of renting from one, and how private landlords can impact rental housing overall.
A private landlord is a person who owns and operates a rental without a management company. The same person reviews the rental application, writes up the lease, collects the rent, and decides when to replace appliances like the water heater.
This arrangement is often called “For Rent By Owner,” or FRBO.
Corporate versus private ownership is split by building size. Individual investors own about 59% of the country’s rental properties, but those properties hold only about 32% of its rental units, according to the federal 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey. That’s because companies typically own the larger multi-unit buildings, and private landlords own smaller properties with one to a few units.
Like renting from a corporate landlord, renting from a private landlord has upsides and downsides. Individual rental property owners can make decisions unilaterally, which can offer tenants some flexibility, but they may also be more prone to missteps in pricing, maintenance, and communication.
This article focuses on the upsides, though. Below, explore five reasons renters seek private landlords when finding their next place.
Private landlords usually answer tenants’ questions and requests. The 2021 Rental Housing Finance Survey found that 22% of rental properties with one to four units are managed professionally, compared to 84% of properties with 150 or more units.
So, a renter in a fourplex has a better chance of contacting the building’s owner directly to coordinate maintenance requests and other issues. A renter in a 200-unit building, meanwhile, likely deals with staff who must follow company policy in all respects.
Private landlords can also easily approve special requests like an early move-in date or rescheduling repairs based on the tenant’s schedule. With a corporate landlord, however, those requests are subject to strict rules and layers of bureaucracy.
With that said, there are also downsides to dealing with one person rather than a corporate team. A private landlord can only do so much and might not have time to respond quickly, but corporate landlords have dedicated staff to handle requests and comments.
Researchers at the NYU Furman Center matched ownership records against listings and court filings for New York City multifamily buildings from 2012 through 2023. A simple comparison showed corporate owners asking 6.4% more in rent than noncorporate owners.
Once the researchers accounted for renovations and differences between buildings, that gap shrank, but it didn’t vanish. Corporate owners still asked about 3% more than noncorporate owners for similar units. While 3% of monthly rent may not sound like much, it adds up to some significant savings over time.
Some large landlords also lean on software to set rents. In January 2025, the Justice Department added six large landlords to its lawsuit against RealPage. Together, they operated more than 1.3 million units, and the department alleged they swapped nonpublic pricing data and used RealPage’s algorithms to set rents.
RealPage settled with the department in November 2025, and by September 2026, five of the six landlords had also reached proposed settlements.
Some corporate landlords have advertised rents that leave out mandatory fees. Federal regulators have targeted these junk fees, and recent cases have involved large national companies rather than individual owners.
In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission alleged that Invitation Homes, the largest single-family rental provider in the country, advertised rents without mandatory fees, which could add up to more than $1,700 a year. In the end, the company agreed to pay $48 million to settle the case. In 2025, Greystar settled for $23 million in consumer redress after being accused of advertising prices without mandatory fees.
Regulators are now looking past individual cases. In March 2026, the FTC took the first step toward a rule on deceptive rental housing fees, including advertised rents that leave out mandatory charges.
In the Invitation Homes case, the FTC said renters learned the real price only when they got a copy of the lease, and sometimes not until after they’d signed it. So before signing, a renter can ask any landlord, private or corporate, for a written list of every monthly charge.
Renters with pets may find more flexibility with private landlords. The Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative’s 2025 national dataset found that 79% of rental properties say they allow pets. Still, fewer than 10% qualify as pet-inclusive, meaning they set no breed or weight limits and charge reasonable (or no) pet fees.
The same report found that 69% of pet-owning renters see fees as a key barrier to securing housing, with pet rent the most burdensome of those costs.
Corporate landlords typically have the same pet policies across all rental units. So, if pets are banned or limited in one location, renters with pets will likely face the same restrictions regardless of individual circumstances.
However, landlords with just one or two rental properties may have more freedom to make exceptions for individual pets. They can consider factors such as the animal’s size, age, temperament, training, and the renter’s history as a pet owner, rather than relying on a blanket policy.
Eviction habits also vary between private and corporate landlords. The NYU Furman Center study of New York City multifamily buildings found that corporate owners file about 1.5 more evictions per 100 units every year.
Meanwhile, a 2025 study of more than 200,000 Kentucky eviction cases found that larger landlords are nearly twice as likely as smaller ones to push a case to a final eviction judgment. The study found that smaller landlords usually resolve disputes before a judge rules, since court costs and the risk to their reputation weigh more heavily.
Additionally, a peer-reviewed study of Washington, D.C., court records from 2014 to 2019 found a 17% chance that an eviction filing would turn into a pattern of repeat filings against the same household when the landlord owned one unit, versus 49% when the landlord owned 5,000 units. Repeat filings from larger landlords were also less likely to end in an eviction.
With that said, building type explains part of the gap. In the Furman Center study, a raw comparison showed corporate owners filing 4.4 more evictions per 100 units, and about half of that difference traced back to the kinds of buildings they own. The gap of 1.5 extra evictions per 100 units is what remained after the researchers controlled for building differences, renovations, and the timing of each sale.
Tenants searching for private landlords still have their work cut out. Rental listings rarely state whether a landlord is corporate or private, and the term “For Rent By Owner” is often used loosely.
As in-demand as private landlords may be, individual ownership has been losing ground in recent years.
Among single-family rentals, the share owned by individuals fell from 70.9% in 2021 to 59.6% in 2024, according to Chandan Economics’ reading of the newest Rental Housing Finance Survey tables. Ownership by limited liability companies and partnerships rose from 15.2% to 20.6%, though individuals still hold the largest share. Read these figures with some caution, since some owners may shift their properties into LLCs for liability or estate reasons.
Federal legislation may soon alter these numbers. In July 2026, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law, prohibiting for-profit entities that control at least 350 single-family homes from buying more. The law doesn’t force those investors to sell homes they already own, though, and exempts several kinds of purchases, including build-to-rent programs and renovate-to-rent programs. The prohibition takes effect on Jan. 7, 2027. Meanwhile, a shrinking share of individually owned rentals may increase renter demand for private landlords.
Still, tenants are unlikely to abandon the hunt. A single person with authority can make exceptions to the rules here and there. By contrast, a system built to oversee thousands of rental units is unlikely to have the same flexibility.
Of course, none of that means that an individual owner is automatically a better landlord than a corporation. But private landlords do give renters options.
This story was produced by TurboTenant and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
