By Iris Craige, Assistant Director of Policy and Advocacy

April 14, 2026

Over the past several years, Los Angeles has seen a growing number of homes sold to corporate landlords. These companies often operate through networks of LLCs and trusts, making it hard to see how much housing they actually control. On paper, they may look like many small landlords. In reality, they may own large portfolios across the city and county.

SAJE has been tracking this issue for years. Through our research and work with tenants, we’ve seen how corporate ownership can drive rent increases, displacement, and building neglect in the quest to maximize profit for shareholders. When ownership is hidden, it’s harder to pinpoint who to hold accountable for repairs, illegal evictions, and rent increases, and it’s tenants who pay the price.

This issue is not unique to L.A.; across the country corporate investors have expanded their presence in the housing market. In fact, the problem is so bad that even President Trump, a notorious slumlord (among other things), seems concerned.

Here in L.A., the Housing and Homelessness Committee instructed the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) to begin tracking corporate ownership and landlord behavior (CF 23-0840) this past February. Two additional motions introduced last week expand that effort. Together, these moves signal that the city is starting to take corporate consolidation seriously.

The committee instructed LAHD to:

• Track how many properties landlords own and how they structure their business
• Study how quickly landlords are expanding their portfolios, and how that relates to displacement
• Analyze corporate landlord behavior, including complaints, violations, evictions, and buyouts
• Study property-flipping business models
• Look at how investors are acquiring housing from distressed homeowners and small landlords
• Expand this analysis beyond L.A. City to include countywide portfolios

This shift is meaningful, and indicates the city is focusing on not just who owns housing in Los Angeles, but how they behave. Corporate landlords rarely hold all of their properties under one name. Rather, they spread ownership across many LLCs and trusts. Unless we connect the dots between these LLCs and trusts and their true owners, large landlords will continue to appear small on paper while operating at a massive scale in practice. This creates a serious risk; when the city moves forward with exemptions for so-called small landlords without fully understanding ownership, corporate operators are able to sidestep regulations designed to hold them accountable. Without ownership transparency, the system will miss the corporate landlords they mean to hold accountable.

The council’s instructions are a step in the right direction. SAJE will continue to work towards policies that empower tenants. We thank Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Monica Rodriguez for their leadership, and hope to work with them to bring accountability to corporate landlords.