Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Tuesday Edition #31

We Finally Know How Many PM Companies There Are

Ever wonder how many property management companies there are in the United State? Yesterday I polled my LinkedIn followers to see what they’d think:

Once or twice a year, I go looking for an actual number.

Here's what I’ve always found: Nothing. As far as I can tell, nobody has ever actually counted the residential property management companies in America.

That bugged me, because it seems like something we should know?

I finally got sick of wondering and pointed a small army of AI research agents powered by Fable at every data source I could think of (Census, SEC filings, HUD surveys, license rolls, vendor counts, directories, etc), had them attack each other's work, and then verified every important number against the primary source. This took a while.

Importantly, I only counted companies whose core business is managing long-term single-family and small multifamily rentals (under 100 units) for third-party owners. Companies like my own RL Property Management. Not HOA-only managers, not the institutional apartment giants, not STR/Airbnb management companies, and not brokerages where PM is a small side hustle.

The answer:
31,000 Property Management Companies

(The high-confidence range is 26,000 to 36,000.)

Why nobody could count this before

The government tries. The Census Bureau's category for us (NAICS 531311, "Residential Property Managers") counted 39,404 employer firms in the 2022 Economic Census. Sounds authoritative, except that code also includes HOA management companies, on-site apartment management offices, and vacation rental managers. Meanwhile, thousands of real PM companies are invisible because they're classified as real estate brokerages. So the official number is simultaneously too big and too small.

And the numbers you'll find by Googling are worse. The "300,000 property management companies" stats floating around the internet count every tax filing with a property-management flavor, including hundreds of thousands of self-managing landlords and side gigs. I pulled the actual nonemployer records: 252,918 solo "property manager" filings in 2022. Nearly half reported less than $25,000 in receipts. Exactly 10 of them cleared $1 million. Ten, in the whole country.

Three ways in, one answer

The only way to get a real number is to triangulate, so I built three independent estimates:

• Down from the Census. Start with 39,404 employer firms, subtract the HOA-only companies (the community association trade group counts 9,000–10,000 of those), subtract the institutional apartment managers (Harvard's Joint Center counts roughly 12,000 firms managing 50+ unit properties), subtract vacation-only managers, then add back the PM companies hiding under brokerage codes and the legitimate solo operators. You land in the high 20,000s to mid 30,000s.

• Up from the vendors. AppFolio's latest 10-K reports 22,096 property management customers, all by itself. Layer in Buildium, Rent Manager, Rentvine and the rest, strip out their HOA, big-multifamily, and DIY-landlord customers, and gross up for companies not on any major platform: low 20,000s to high 30,000s.

• From the doors. This one is my favorite, because it runs on data that didn't exist until this year. The 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey (released in February) separates, for the first time, properties managed by a management company from properties managed by staff the owner employs directly. Result: 22.3% of single-unit rentals and 14.3% of 2–4 unit properties are with a management company. Work through the housing stock and you get roughly 6.9 million third-party-managed doors in our segment. Divide by average doors per company and you land right at ~31,000.

What the 31,000 look like

Here’s how the 31k PM firms break down by likely units under management:

Our industry is extremely fragmented. About 6.9 million doors across 31,000 companies averages out to ~220 doors, but the median company runs fewer than 100. Even after years of roll-ups and PE money, the largest firm in the country holds well under 1% of the national market. There is no consolidation endgame in sight.

The blurriest line in the whole exercise is deciding when a broker managing a handful of doors becomes a "company." Draw that line differently and you move the total by a few thousand in either direction.

Further reading: The NEW 2026 list of the largest property management companies.

-Peter

PM Company & Vendor Updates

• DoorLoop named Ronnie Gurion to its board of directors (Gurian is President and COO of Clio)

• ImmoAdmin recently launched an “all in one platform designed for rental property owners and professional property managers”. Notable as there are very limited PM software options in Canada.

• Second Nature’s VIP registration is live for NARPM’s national fall conference & tradeshow coming up in October. Well worth your time to register if attending the show.

Giving Everybody Claude Won't Make You Money

Our leasing manager got Claude to help with rental listings. Saves her two hours a week. Saves the company nothing. Turns out that's the norm right now. Jon found an interesting parallel in a 1989 paper about factories that swapped in electric motors and saw zero productivity gain, because nobody redesigned the floor.

On the latest Lazy Leverage, Jon and I get into why most small businesses are stuck at "phase zero" with AI, plus the Fortune 500 company quoted $80,000 for one agent that Jon's team built for free.

(Also available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts)

Meme Tuesday:

Now that it’s almost September…

Did you miss it? 3 highlights from Friday’s Newsletter:

1. ServiceTitan updated its TOS to restrict automated/AI-agent access

2. Podcast with TurboTenant CEO, Seamus Nally

3. PropertyMeld promo for MX Summit ($240 off)

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The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. I may have consulting agreements with, or financial interests in, companies mentioned in this newsletter. Additionally, some of the links included in this newsletter are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links. Always perform your own due diligence before making any financial or business decisions.