The Property Owners and Managers Survey (POMS), conducted in 1995, collected information from the owners and managers of privately held rental properties on their rental and maintenance policies, and the reasons for these policies. Publicly held (governmentally owned) rental properties were not included in the survey. This was the first known national survey of property owners and managers in the United States. The data allow researchers to analyze characteristics by the number of rental units or the number of properties. In properties of more than one housing unit, the survey found 2,236,024 properties with less than five units, 459,263 with five to 49 units, and 59,577 with 50 or more units in the property. Detailed tabulations using the number of rental units as the unit of analysis can be found on the housing statistics section of  the Census Bureau web site at //www/census.gov/hhes/ www/poms.html. This report is the first using the number of properties as the unit of analysis. POMS was sponsored by the Department of Housing  and Urban Development.

For this report, we group multi-family properties into three categories: Small multifamily properties have fewer than five units in the property; medium size multi-family properties have five to 49 units in the property; and large multifamily properties have 50 or more units in the property.