The Emergence of Ownership Opacity in Landed Capitalism: Consolidation, Adaption, Evasion – Andrew Messamore
Posted: 12/31/2025 (CSDE Seminar Series)
When: Friday, January 9, 2025 at 12:30 pm
Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom
We are looking forward to hosting CSDE Affiliate Andrew Messamore from the University of Washington for the first seminar of Winter 2026 Quarter on Friday, January 9 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative. Seminar posters are available here or can be picked up during seminar. You can also subscribe to our Trumba Events to receive regular announcements about CSDE-sponsored events.
Declining sole proprietorship rates among landlords are viewed as indicators of growing corporate control of rental housing. However, declines in sole proprietorship may reflect the popularization of investment vehicles across amateur landlords, causing studies to overestimate the ownership share of firms. Moving beyond political economy, this presentation conceptualizes landed capitalism as a complex and adaptive housing system, and proposes declines in sole proprietorship reflect the emergence of ownership opacity across the landlord population. Evaluating this perspective through an enumeration of landownership in Austin, Texas, results from longitudinal analysis show that the ownership share of small landlords is stable, but that processes of portfolio consolidation, investor adaptation, and regulatory evasion are encouraging opaque ownership structures across landlords of nearly all sizes. These findings suggest ownership opacity is a form of emergent complexity created by population evolution among landlords, and demonstrate the utility of housing systems theory for both the field of comparative landownership studies and policies that aim to address disparities in housing ownership and tenure.
Dr. Andrew Messamore is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. Messamore’s research examines the rising popularity and formalization of rental landlording in the United States, as well as how a new generation of urban housing movements are confronting urban inequalities. He has also published widely on the use of quantitative and computational methodologies in social science. You can find his work in Social Problems, Social Networks, Urban Studies, Social Currents, Social Psychology Quarterly, Administration & Society, and Socius. Messamore earned his BA in Sociology form the University of Texas Austin, his MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, his PhD in Philosophy and Sociology from University of Texas at Austin
Date: 01/09/2026
Time: 12:30 PM
Location: Parrington Hall 360