Single-Building Owners vs. Portfolio Owners (U.S.)
Hey CRE! I'm working on a project for a client that would be so much simpler to solve if I had access to this very specific stat that I can't seem to track down. Maybe you all might be able to help:  
 
Roughly what percentage of all building owners in the US own just a single building vs. own multiple buildings?  
 
Ideally, what I'm looking for is the % split between, let's say "Mom &amp; Pop" owners (1-2 buildings) vs. Medium (2-5) vs. REITs and Portfolio types (5+) 
  
Anyone have any guesses on where I could find that information? THANK YOU very much in advance for any guidance and direction. I'm a bit stuck at the moment.
[{"id": "h0xiky4", "text": "As a newer member of this sub, I\u2019d like to add on to OP\u2019s question with a more general. Where is a good place to go to get market information? Is there a trusted standard?", "replies": [{"id": "h0xmj5j", "text": "FWIW, I reached out to BOMA first, and they told me that they could only speak to their members\u2014not building owners generally.", "replies": [{"id": "h0xmn6i", "text": "BOMA?", "replies": [{"id": "h0xmv4s", "text": "Building Owners &amp; Management Association. With a name like that, I thought *surely* they would have some stats for me... but alas all I learned was that among their owners, the vast majority are REITs\u2014not single building owners.", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "h0yci4e", "text": "I would think that is a hard stat to gather due to the many many variables for ownership. I think the vast majority are Portfolio types.  It is a hard statistic to gather with the various types of ownership,  LLC vs. CORP. structures as well. We have several LLC set up to own a building, but those LLC are owned by the Corporation.  Or something like that, the structure makes sense to the Lawyers and the Accountants. \n\nThe single owners are the business owners who want to own their own properties,  to control costs for their business, small mom and pop shops.   But if you look around in most metropolitan areas those are disappearing too.\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\nAnecdotally, i would say,  less than 10% Commericial Property owners are mom and pop owner with less than 2 properties.\n\nthen maybe 30 Percent Medium with the 2-5 properties.  and the final 60% would be owned by some form a multi unit ownership group.  \n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\nBut again that is just the circles I have encountered over the last decade of working in the industry.", "replies": [{"id": "h0ylsox", "text": "This is extremely helpful. Thank you very much /u/corjin", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "h0z4urz", "text": "As both an owner of CRE and a vendor to the industry for over 45 years, I'd say these assumptions are fairly spot on, and I'd add, of the remaining 60%, at least 1/2 of that number (30%) would be in the 15 - 20 building range (local, medium sized players...second generation family stuff), with the remaining 30% being nationals (malls, apts, office, indust., etc.).", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "h0zxgdi", "text": "I'd agree that is a good estimate. I have financed commercial real estate and saw similar trends. To expand on your estimate, I saw a lot of the amateur owners hold Class C/D real estate that they bought with a high cap rate. In the case of retail properties they often did a poor job with maintenance and did not pass back CAM expenses since they self managed the property.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "h1atp04", "text": "&gt; Anecdotally, i would say, less than 10% Commericial Property owners are mom and pop owner with less than 2 properties.\n\nI feel like this question needs better bounded.  Are we talking the entire us?  \n\nIf you go to a small town I'd venture a guess near 100% is small mom and pop ownership or small players.  If you are talking NYC, boston, LA its going to swing the other way.  On a national basis I don't know how that all shakes out, I kind of actually suspect there are probably 10 run down small commercial properties for every 1 an institutional buyer would be interested in.  If you did this by value though it swing hard to the big boys.\n\nWhat an interesting question that is really hard to answer", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "h1245jz", "text": "Breaking it down by property type (office, retail, industrial, multifamily), by area, and investor type (individual vs institutional ownership) might make this easier. Property types may have different units of measure (units or doors for multifamily vs sqft for office or industrial) or sub-types (strip center vs mall with retail). Associations might be a good place to find data: BOMA as mentioned, ICSC for retail, and apartment association for multifamily. Another option is to get the total measure for the US market, using office as an example with sq ft, from a CBRE or Situs RERC report and then subtracting the portfolio-owned space using NAREIT as a starting place.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "h4ixx2n", "text": "There is always Reonomy. I am not affiliated with them at all, btw, but they do a decent job of scraping public data, and have a Portfolios section in Beta at the moment, which shows how many properties each name associated with the building owns.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]