Aug 09


A reader of the ApartmentAssoc Yahoo Group asks:

What is the size of Residential apartment industry in Southeast of Wisconsin?

It is pretty big. I haven’t gone through the work to assemble this data recently, but here is some older data. Assembling fresh data should be less today due to the amount of information you can find on the internet these days.

Ten years ago there were 25,000 rental owners in the City of Milwaukee and 31,000 if you included owner occupied duplexes and fours. Many own one or perhaps two properties. One business member has identified a list of 19,200 owners in the four county area of significant size to warrant direct mail marketing.

Statewide in 2001 there was an estimated 238,000 owners of rental/ investment/income producing real estate in WI. This came from a report by the state’s Department of Administration.

2000 Census shows 822,000 rental units in WI and 136,000 rental units in the city of Milwaukee. We don’t have too much longer to wait to see the 2010 data.


Back in that same time period half the folks elected to the state legislature owned income producing properties. But you could not tell it by their voting records. ;-(

We outnumber teachers statewide and nationally by four to one.

32% of Wisconsinites live in rented housing, more in urban areas. For example 61% of the residents of 53204 are tenants, 26% are owner occupants and 12% are vacant housing. (recent data – Click on housing tab)

Some older, but interesting national data can be found on the Census Property Owners and Managers Survey

For example 86% of rental housing is owned by individuals. In a two year period there were three quarter of a million evictions started in single family units and more than eleven million in multis. For the Census purpose it appears eviction started means something like a five day notice was served.

All this begs the questions:

  1. Why are not more of these owners members of the AASEW?
  2. Why do we allow ourselves be treated so poorly?

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