> Institutional investors own the vast majority of rental units
False - individual investors + trustees own the majority. Institutional investors are nowhere close to the size of a 'vast majority', especially when you consider that many individual investors choose to work through LLCs.
My claim:
> Institutional investors own less than 3% of rental homes
This is referring to single-family homes - I could probably have been more explicit when using the term 'home' above, but I was also replying to a comment specifically about SFH so I thought it was obvious from context.
Probably most of the discrepancy comes from 'institutional investor' not being a well defined term. If we are discussing megacorp, it is closer to the 3% number I have mentioned. If we are discussing mom & pop operating behind LLC, it is likely higher.
Isn't the very next sentence "However, because the share of rental properties owned by individual investors tends to decrease with the property size, individual investors owned less than half (47.8 percent) of rental units, followed by LLPs, LPs, or LLCs (33.2 percent), trustees for estates (3.3 percent), real estate corporations (3.3 percent), and nonprofit organizations (3.2 percent)."
Which makes it seem like the article is claiming the number is 52.2%—somewhere in between your original claim of 3%, and the GP's claim of 74.4%.