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- NMHC Top 50 Revealed: It's Still an Incredibly Fragmented Industry
NMHC Top 50 Revealed: It's Still an Incredibly Fragmented Industry
Takeaways from NMHC's newly released rankings of the largest apartment owners, managers, developers and more.
Jay Parsons
April 10, 2026
Today’s edition sponsored by: JPI, Madera Residential, Authentic, Hawthorne Residential Partners and TeleCloud.
The latest NMHC Top 50 rankings just came out, and … sorry conspiracy theorists, there are still no “behemoths” in the apartment business.
When I give presentations, one of my favorite slides to show is a chart showing the market share of the nation’s largest apartment and SFR owners. (I’ve got a version of it further down.) People even from the industry are often surprised how little market share they have. I then compare that to other industries (pick one: grocery stores, banks, cars, cell phones, e-commerce, healthcare, etc.) and it’s very obvious: Rental housing may be the most fragmented major industry in the United States. Sure, Greystar is the big name, but do you their market share? It’s <0.5% in ownership, ~4% for management and ~2% for construction starts. And they’re #1 for all three categories!
Yesterday, NMHC released its annual rankings of the largest apartment owners, managers, developers, builders and syndicators. And that story — fragmentation and competition — continues to shine through. But there are some notable shifts, as well.
Here’s one interesting takeaway (and more on this further below):
Apartment ownership is as fragmented as ever. In fact, there are actually fewer owners with 100k+ units than we had 10 years ago. And no one player owns even 0.5% market share.
But it’s a somewhat different story with apartment management. Expense pressures plus improved tech / efficiencies of scale appears to be triggering more consolidation in third-party management than in ownership.
Development is changing a bit, too. It’s still a business dominated by small, local developers. But … larger groups are gaining a bit more market share. Not because they’re building a lot more, but rather because many of those small, local developers are struggling to stay active in this higher-rate, weaker-rent environment hostile to new starts.
Let’s break down the highlights from the latest leaderboards one category at a time.
NMHC Top 50 Owners
Key takeaway: Apartment ownership remains incredibly fragmented, with the top 50 collectively owning just 11% of the nation’s apartments. None reach 0.5% market share. Remarkably, it’s actually more fragmented at the top today than it was in years past. Back in 2015, eight owners held >100k units, and top player held 244k units. Today, it’s only three, and the largest owner has 119k units — well below the No. 1s of years past. Why so fragmented? It’s a highly liquid market with low barriers to entry (assuming you have capital, of course), and it’s a sector were new entrants can easily outsource day-to-day management to third-party firms.
Leader: Greystar retains the #1 spot for a third straight year with 119,160 units. Greystar’s ownership has gotten so big that it now owns almost 0.5% of all U.S. apartments. (I hope sarcasm was obvious there.) Greystar was actually a net seller last year, with its count down 3.4k units year-over-year.
Big movers: Morgan Properties made some sizable portfolio acquisitions (particularly in the Midwest) last year, adding 13.7k units and leapfrogging MAA into the #2 spot nationally with 110k units owned. Other big gainers were FPA Multifamily (+10.6k units to #11), Hunt Companies (+10.4k units to #9) and Fairfield Residential (+5.3k units to #21). TruAmerica and Weidner were the only others to add >4k units last year.
Just made it: Wood Partners (based in Atlanta, GA) ranked #50 with 26,447 units. The total needed to crack the Top 50 hasn’t changed much in recent years. It was 24k back in 2010.
New entrants: Five. Of those, one of them (Liberty Military Housing) would have made it but was not included in last year’s list. The other four: Trammell Crow, Fairstead, Continental Properties and Wood Partners. Three of those are perhaps most known as major developers, but have growing ownership arms as well.
NMHC Top 50 Managers
Key takeaway: While apartment ownership remains deeply fragmented (and no real material growth in market share among the top 50 owners collectively), it’s a very different story among property managers. The top 50 managers collectively manage nearly 5.3 million units, up 6% year-over-year and likely a record high. That amounts to about 24% of the nation’s apartment stock, according to NMHC. The growth likely reflects increased efficiencies of scale provided by some larger operators, as well as some consolidation in what’s increasingly a thin-margin business at a time when cost pressures are particularly acute.
Leader: Greystar has officially topped the 1 million unit mark, reporting 1,014,091 units managed. That’s up 67k from last year. And it’s >2x its largest competitor, Asset Living. As big as Greystar has become, they still manage a tiny share (3.5%) of the total U.S. apartment stock.
Big movers: Asset Living added more units (158k) than any other manager, holding firm in the #2 spot with 446,427 units, in large part through its acquisition of FPI (the sixth-largest manager on NMHC’s 2025 list). Asset Living’s total unit count is less than half the leader (Greystar) but also nearly 2x the third-highest player (Willow Bridge).
Four others added just over 20k units in 2025: Willow Bridge (#3), RPM Living (#4) Arqline (#40) and ZRS Management (#10).
Just made it: American Landmark (based in Tampa, FL) ranked #50 with 36,611 units managed. The floor to crack the Top 50 has been gradually ticking upward over time, and climbed another 2k units last year.
New entrants: Six. However, of those six, three of them would have made last year’s list but apparently did not report their numbers until later or were otherwise excluded: Morgan Properties, MLG Capital and SRG Residential. The other three: Arqline, Kairoi Residential and American Landmark.
NMHC Top 25 Developers
Key takeaway: The Top 25 developers collectively started 96,366 units in 2025, representing 28% of all apartment starts. That’s the second-largest share on record behind only 2024 (30%). Historically, the top 25 comprised 21-25% of starts. How did the share climb? It’s not that the big guys are collectively doing more (they did much more in 2022-23), but that most smaller developers are doing less – suggesting larger developers are likely benefiting from efficiencies of scale and better access to capital amidst a challenging time for new development.
Leader: Greystar at 7,188 units started in 2025, though that was down from 8,247 in 2024.
Big movers: JPI jumped +18 spots to #2. JPI started 4,208 more units in 2025 than in 2024, the largest increase among all apartment developers. Harbor Group International was the only other developer with year-over-year bump of 2k+ units, surging from just 206 units in 2024 to 2,913 units in 2025.
Just made it: Landmark Properties (based in Athens, GA) came in at #25 (NMHC only ranks the top 25 developers) at 1,995 units. By the way, that’s only the second time since 2018 when a developer with <2k units started made the Top 25 list. The only other time was last year, when seven developers made the list ranging from 1.5k to 1.9k starts.
New entrants: Six. Of those six, two of them would have made last year’s list but were excluded (Middleburg and Gilbane) for one reason or another. The other four: Harbor Group, LDG Development, Willow Bridge and OHT Partners.
NMHC Top 25 Builders
Leader: Summit Contracting Group held onto the top spot with 10.3k units started, roughly matching its prior-year total.
Big movers: JPI (+4k to #5) and OHT Partners (+3.5k to #4) took the biggest jumps.
Just made it: Roers Companies ranked 25th with 2,191 units started, up 500+ units from the year before.
NMHC Top 10 Syndicators
Leader: Raymond James Affordable Housing Investments maintained the top spot and padded its lead, adding nearly 10k units last year and reaching 180k units.
Big movers: Outside of Raymond James, CREA (+9.4k units to #7), National Equity Fund (+6.1k to #3) and PNC Multifamily Capital (+3.8k to #4) reported big gains.
Just made it: Hunt Capital Partners ranked 10th with 44,504 units.
— My Latest Posts on LinkedIn —
Here are some recent posts if you missed them:
Peak apartment completions are now in the rearview mirror.
Early numbers on the spring leasing season are ho-hum: not bad, not great.
The build-to-rent construction pipeline is shut down thanks to potential legislation.
Every Midwest apartment investor should have this slide in their decks.
Camden is promoting its next generation of homegrown leadership into the C-suite.
Senator Warren is expanding her sights to apartments and manufactured housing.
Could the ROAD to Housing Act die on the vine? The latest news suggests it’s possible.
Uncertainty is the term du jour for apartment and SFR investors these days, and for good reason, but the long-term demand tailwinds are still intact.
The rise of the accidental landlord is putting more supply in the rental market, thereby putting downward pressure on rent growth.
The best way to “stick it” to housing investors? Follow the example of Austin and build a lot of housing, as a new Pew study shows.
America’s rental housing stock is aging, with the median age now 45 years old.
Rental affordability is a deeply bifurcated issue of haves and have nots, as the latest Harvard report on rental housing shows.
Who remembers ranch apartments? Equity Residential used to have a lot of them.
The relationship between supply and rents is undeniably obvious, looking at the markets leading the nation for rent growth and rent cuts.
Concessions are more available today than at any point since the early 2010s.
Why not give a “first look” to individual homebuyers instead of install a complex regulatory regime over the SFR market?
In supply-heavy markets, market-rate rents have fallen below affordable housing’s max allowable rents at 60% AMI.
Most policymakers (and most Americans, too) probably have no idea that the U.S. LOST more than 1 million single-family rental homes over the past decade.
— Now Spinning on The Rent Roll Podcast —
For 2025, The Rent Roll with Jay Parsons podcast ranked in Spotify’s top 2% of podcasts for minutes played and in the top 1% for most shared shows. Additionally, The Rent Roll continues to frequently rank on Apple’s charts for investing-themed podcasts, and was recently ranked as the third-best podcast in all commercial real estate (and #1 in housing) by the readers of CRE Daily!
Thank you to everyone who’s made The Rent Roll part of your weekly routine! New episodes are released every Thursday morning.
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Episode 77: Sub-Institutional Multifamily Update, with Adaptive Realty’s Moses Kagan and ReSeed Partners’ Rhett Bennett
Episode 76: Affordable Housing Isn’t What You Think with Dominium’s Nick Andersen
Episode 75: The Evolution of Equity Residential with EQR’s Mark Parrell
Episode 74: Inside Multifamily’s Biggest Family Business with Morgan Properties’ Jason Morgan
Episode 73: Takeaways from SFR REIT Calls + the Outlook for Rental Housing Investment with Principal’s Rich Hill
Episode 72: Debacle: NYC Rent Stabilized Apartments with New York Apartment Association’s Kenny Burgos
Episode 71: 7 Takeaways from Apartment REIT Calls with Bank of America’s Jana Galan
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