Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effects of rentiership on property tax valuation and administration

This doctoral dissertation research project examines how corporate consolidation in the rental market is impacting the fiscal landscape of cities. The project specifies the evolving portfolio management strategies of institutional investors, assesses the impacts of these strategies on tax valuation, assessment and administration, and investigates the connections between corporate portfolios and local strategies to lower tax assessments. The research contributes to knowledge on the housing shortage by analyzing how shifting concentrations of investment in rental housing are impacting urban tax bases and city budgets. The project also contributes to the education and training of an early-career scientist. This research proposes that increasingly consolidated ownership structures associated with rental housing are disrupting longstanding patterns and trends in tax assessment. The researchers conduct expert interviews, augmented by observations at real estate and tax assessment conferences, to assess how rental management strategies seek to offset investors’ largest yearly operational expense in local property taxes. This analysis is complemented by extended fieldwork to document how the portfolio management strategies of rental investors capitalize upon the specificities of local tax systems, such as using local tax consultants to file property tax appeals or in advocating for project-based tax abatements. Through its focus on the infrastructural dimensions of taxes and the tax code, this project brings together scholarship from Geography, City and Regional Planning, Science and Technology Studies, and Urban Studies, to specify how housing rentiership is redefining the fiscal landscape of US cities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.