Linking Landlords to Uncover Ownership Obscurity

Forrest Hangen

"GENERATION RENT"

"GENERATION RENT"

"GENERATION LANDLORD"

"GENERATION LANDLORD"

1. Identifying "Who Owns What"

"Who Owns What?"

Why is this a hard question to answer?

"Who Owns What?"

Why is this a hard question to answer?

"Who Owns What?"

Why is this a hard question to answer?

Messy Data

DEUSTCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY
DEUTCH BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY
DEUTCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY
DEUTCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY TRUST
DEUTCHE BANK TRUST COMPANY AMERICAS
DEUTSCH BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY
DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL
DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST

DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY
DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST TRUST
DEUTSCHE BANK NATN L TRUST COMPANY
DEUTSCHE BANK NATNL TRUST COMPANY
DEUTSCHE BANK TRUST
DEUTSCHE BANK TRUST COMPANY
DEUTSCHE BANK TRUST COMPANY AMERICAS
DEUTSCHE BANK TRUST COMPANY TRUST
DEUTSCHE BANK TRUST NATIONAL
DEUTSCHE NATIONAL BANK TRUST COMPANY TRUST

"Who Owns What?"

Why is this a hard question to answer?

Messy Data

&

Ownership Obscurity

LLC

LLC

LLC

Ownership Obscurity

Financialization of Housing

Legal Boundaries of Property Ownership

2 Shifts

Financialization of Housing

Post 2008

Appreciating Asset

Risk

Rent

Income Stream

Financialization of Housing

Ownership Obscurity

Financialization of Housing

Ownership Obscurity

Legal Boundaries of Property Ownership

Legal Boundaries of Property Ownership

pre 1970 - caveat lessee -- "as is" housing

implied warrant of habitability

Landlords are now legally liable for *some* conditions

Legal Boundaries of Property Ownership

Landlords are now legally liable for *some* conditions

Limit Liability

1988 - LLCs become cheap

AIMS

Accurately link landlords to their properties to Uncover and Quantify the effects of Ownership Obscurity

Data

Property Tax Assessment Records

  • Owner's Name
  • Owner's Mailing Address

 

Boston, MA

2004-2019

Corporation Filing Records

  • LLC Name
  • Individuals' Names
  • Individuals' Addresses

Challenges

Messy Data

Ownership Obscurity

Elmer G Gill

Elmr G Gill
Greystone LLC

Eagle LLC

Challenges

Messy Data

Ownership Obscurity

2 Different Solutions

Challenges

Messy Data

Ownership Obscurity

Deliberate Strategy

Limiting Liability

Messy Data

Solution:

1. Text Cleaning and Standardization

L.L.C., Lmtd liability co,llc           LLC
Fifty-eight Green Street L.L.C.


58 Green st llc
Fifty-eight Green Street L.L.C.


58 Green st llc

Solution:

1. Text Cleaning and Standardization

L.L.C., Lmtd liability co,llc           LLC
Fifty-eight Green Street L.L.C.


58 Green st llc
58 GREEN ST LLC


58 GREEN ST LLC

Messy Data

Solution:

2. Fuzzy Matching

Elmer G Gill          Elmr G Gill
Glynn Realty Assoc IV LLC                 Glynn Realty Association I LLC

1. Text Cleaning and Standardization

L.L.C., Lmtd liability co,llc           LLC

Messy Data

Fuzzy Matching

Glynn Realty Assoc IV LLC          Glynn Realty Association II LLC

(Probabilistic Matching)

By Hand

( small-scale)

Out-of-the-Box

( Dedupe, OpenRefine, matchit, etc.)

Custom Probabilistic Matching

651,612 owners
[' Gl','Gly','lyn','ynn','nn ','n R',' Re','Rea','eal','alt','lty','ty ' ...]

3-gram

"  A"  "  Ad" " Al" " As" "El " "Bar" "Llc" . . .
Glynn Realty Assoc IV LLC 0 0 0 .178 0 0 .199  . . .
 . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .

tf-idf

Custom Probabilistic Matching

Glynn Realty Assoc IV LLC          Glynn Realty Association II LLC

Custom Probabilistic Matching

Glynn Realty Assoc IV LLC          Glynn Realty Association II LLC

Cosine Similarity

cos(\theta) = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{n}{A_{i}B_{i}}}{\sqrt{\sum_{i=1}^{n}{A_{i}^{2}}}\sqrt{\sum_{i=1}^{n}{B_{i}^{2}}}} 
measures similarity between two entities using the cosine of the angle between their two vectors in a multidimensional space
Greystone LLC

Eagle LLC
Not done yet...

Ownership Obscurity

Greystone LLC

Eagle LLC
Greystone LLC
Eagle LLC

Corporation Filing Records

Ownership Obscurity

Greystone LLC

Eagle LLC
Greystone LLC
Eagle LLC

Corporation Filing Records

Fuzzy Matching

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

55 GREYSTONE LLC
EAGLE LLC
12 GREEN ST LLC

Tax Assessment

55 GREYSTONE LLC
EAGLE LLC
12 GREEN ST LLC

Corporation Records

Tax Assessment

55 GREYSTONE LLC
EAGLE LLC
12 GREEN ST LLC
Greystone Realty Corporation
Unique ID

Tax Assessment

55 GREYSTONE LLC
EAGLE LLC
12 GREEN ST LLC
Unique ID

  • Landlord Size

  • Corporate Status

  • Obscurity

  • Geographic Scope

  • Property Types

  • Property-level Outcomes

Tax Assessment

Owners

Raw Tax Assessment

4.8%

Fuzzy-Matching

12.3%

+11.9%

Corporate Data

16.7%

Raw Tax Assessment

24.5%

Units

Fuzzy-Matching

33.7%

+17.5%

Corporate Data

42.0%

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Ownership Obscurity

Consolidation

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI)
HHI = \sum_{i=1}^{N}{S_i^{2}}
where S = a landlord's share of an outcome

Units

Eviction Filings

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI)
HHI = .16^{2}+.16^{2}+.16^{2}+.16^{2}+.16^{2}+.16^{2}
HHI =0.166
HHI = .5^{2}+.33^{2}+.16^{2}
HHI =0.388

Consolidation of Units

0-No consolidation to 1-One owner for all properties

Consolidation of Units

Consolidation of Evictions

Consolidation of Evictions

Largest Owners of 10% of Units

All other owners

506

Evictions

3,092

Evictions

/ 16k units

/ 151k units

Takeaways

  • Difficulty in revealing ownership has shifted from messy data to ownership obscurity
  • Using Corporate Data reveals ownership obscurity
  • Ownership Obscurity hides new scales of consolidation and responsibility for evictions & property conditions

Preprint @ SocArXiv

https://github.com/forrest-h/linking-landlords

Thank You

Forrest Hangen

 

 

hangen.f@northeastern.edu