How to research your landlord
June 16, 2026
The Private Equity Stakeholder Project and the Tenant Union Federation have released a new guide to landlord research for tenants looking to identify the ultimate owner of their property.
What is landlord research?
Researching your landlord involves finding strategic information about the person who owns your home that can help you as a tenant to solve problems in your housing situation. Perhaps someone bought your manufactured housing park, and you’re not sure who to contact when issues arise. Maybe you’ve been experiencing mice in your space and you want to know if this is a problem other people are having in their units. Or maybe you’ve realized your landlord owns three houses on your block and you want to see what other properties they own. These are all common scenarios where one might use landlord research.
Landlord research is difficult by design
In a world where information of all kinds is more plentiful than ever, it remains surprisingly difficult to look up your landlord. In fact, this is by design. When housing databases are made available, they’re usually designed with real estate companies, rather than the public interest, in mind. Good quality information, like that found in subscription-based housing databases, is often expensive and hard to access.
As such, we turn to open source (free and accessible) landlord research, piecing together the scant information sources that do exist to gain a better understanding of our living situation. One major information source used in this information gathering are public records databases like property records and business entity registries. These sites themselves are difficult to navigate. They are often old or are not designed with a seamless user experience in mind. Public records tools also vary quite a bit in the availability and quality of information offered depending on which state or county they belong to, with each jurisdiction hosting their own uniquely formatted websites. As it stands, there is no centralized national database that tracks topics of interest to tenants like land ownership, eviction activity, or even money laundering, making it much more difficult to identify problem owners. We have come up with a workaround because the structure of housing related data sources heavily favors the interests of landlords rather than tenants.
To access the full guide, click here >>
